Review: Emo ‘Primary Trust’ at Mark Taper Forum
- Anita W. Harris
- 18 hours ago
- 3 min read
Eboni Booth’s 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Primary Trust” has good intentions. Its 38-year-old protagonist has suffered lifelong anxiety compounded by childhood trauma, making him immediately sympathetic and a poster child for today’s heightened focus on mental health.
Yet the play itself suffers from a sense of incompleteness and disproportion, often relying on telling rather than showing, depicting alcohol as both fun self-medication and a therapeutic device that enables deep sharing — seemingly incongruous with the play’s emphasis on mental health issues and forming healthy friendships — and filling its short run time with incidental comedy rather than story.
Besides strong acting, music and costuming, the Mark Taper Forum’s current production does little to overcome that underdevelopment. Lighting makes little sense, a service bell frequently rings to signal transition points but sometimes for no reason at all — jarring the brain with its non-Pavlovian randomness — and the miniature-town set feels charming at first but toylike by the end.
That may be because the narrative itself is sparse, despite its emotionally compelling premise. In an extended prologue, Kenneth (Petey McGee) introduces his story, and we can see and feel that he literally embodies vulnerability, reminding us of our own and thereby drawing us in to lament his every hurt and cheer his every victory, however small.
Kenneth lives a semi-secluded life in a small New York town, working in a used bookstore and enjoying daily happy hours at a tiki bar with his nice friend Bert (Ugo Chukwu), who happens to be imaginary (as in the 1946 play "Harvey"). Regardless, we really like Bert because he is not only kind but indispensably helpful to Kenneth in managing his severe anxieties.
Yet as Kenneth’s life is forced to change due to the bookstore closing — exposing him to increased challenges and more people, a couple of whom eventually become friends — there is apparently no more room for Bert. Bert!
That is the story. Along the way, though, we meet tiki-bar waitress Corrina (Rebecca S’Manga Frank), bookstore owner Sam and bank manager Clay (both men played by James Urbaniak), all of whom show kindness to Kenneth and also make us laugh due to Frank’s and Urbaniak’s excellent comedic delivery in multiple roles.
We also enjoy original moody music for keyboards and cello by Luke Wygodny performing on stage (and ringing that darned bell), with sound design by Mikaal Sulaiman. And Sophia Choi’s modern costuming is well designed for each character and situation.
Set design by Marsha Ginsberg is also creative, bringing to life the buildings of Cranberry, New York — including a church, shoe store and all-important Wally’s bar, with beautiful snow falling at one point — but it necessitates the actors taking time to alternately wheel out a bar table and chairs and a bank counter as scenes go back and forth between those two main places, rather than simply feature both on a split stage. It also feels odd that we never see where Kenneth lives.
Directed by Knud Adams, the four actors immerse themselves in their characters with sensitivity and precision, with the athletic Frank frequently transforming in real time and Kenneth breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly and even walk the aisles, allowing us to feel his emotional fragility all the more deeply.
But the story itself is more of an extended poem than a believable tale, depending heavily on the audience’s sympathetic response to Kenneth, as well as chuckling at the extended comedic bits and attempting to decipher the bell, perhaps hoping we might overlook how the storied emperor here has no clothes.
“Primary Trust” continues through June 28 at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, with shows Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at 213-628-2772 or visit CenterTheatreGroup.org. Run time is 95 minutes with no intermission.