Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – William Jackson Harper gives a quietly stunning performance in Eboni Booth’s compelling PRIMARY TRUST

• By drediman
• June 15, 2023
• No Comments

Earlier this week, I had the chance to catch up with Roundabout Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway production of Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust at the Laura Pels Theatre (the playwright was last represented in New York with her play Paris, which was staged by Atlantic Theater Company in 2020 shortly before the pandemic struck, also Off-Broadway). In essence, Booth’s compelling work tells the story of Kenneth, a reclusive 38-year-old Black man in a small, declining Upstate New York town who finds himself unmoored when the bookstore he’s works at for more than two decades closes up shop.

Although Primary Trust comes across as a delicate and poetic tale about human fragility and psychological self-preservation (in fact, the play is a striking inverse of John J. Caswell, Jr.’s maximalist but equally captivating family drama Wet Brain, which is currently running at Playwrights Horizons), it’s textures are nonetheless boldly and richly rendered. As a meditation on loneliness and anxiety — both of the everyday and traumatic varieties — the play works remarkably well because it deftly counterbalances the fraught realities of living with its momentary joys. As such, the emotions that it elicits have the markings of real life. And although there’s a chilly, arms-length objectivity that pervades piece (e.g., there are strong shades of Thornton Wilder’s seminal Our Town throughout), it doesn’t shy away from depicting the human decency we’re all capable of.

The Roundabout production has been directed by Knud Adams, who in recent years has been amassing an impressive portfolio of notable directorial work. His staging for Primary Trust is clear-eyed yet tender, and he’s assembled an extraordinary quartet of stage actors who deliver sensitive, finely etched performances. As the unmoored Kenneth, the immensely likeable William Jackson Harper gives a haunted, quietly stunning performance that’s deeply rooted in authenticity; it’s as if he’s not even acting at all, which is of course the ultimate goal. Also superb as various townspeople are veterans Jay O. Sanders and April Matthis, two of New York’s finest stage actors. The whole affair is underscored by soulful instrumentals played live by musician Luke Wygodny.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

PRIMARY TRUST
Off-Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre
1 hour, 35 minutes (without an intermission)
Through July 2