✭✭✭✩✩

by Eboni Booth, directed by Cherissa Richards

Grand Theatre London & Crow’s Theatre, Grand Theatre, London

January 24-31, 2026;

Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto

May 26-June 21, 2026

Kenneth: “Things would have turned out better if my mother had lived … But Bert brought me back”

The Grand Theatre London is currently presenting the Ontario premiere of Primary Trust, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by American actor and playwright Eboni Booth. It is a gentle, small-scale play about a Black man named Kenneth, who at age 38 finally gains confidence in himself. The trouble is that Kenneth’s path to success is so smooth the play is devoid of dramatic tension. The entire cast is excellent but the performance of Durae McFarlane as Kenneth is outstanding.

The action is set in the town of Cranberry (pop. 20,000), a fictitious suburb of Rochester, New York, sometime in the 1990s, or as Booth’s text says, “Before smart phones”. Kenneth narrates his own story fifteen years after the events have taken place. Kenneth prefaces his story by saying, “This is the story of friendship. Of how I got a job. A story of love and balance and time and the smallest of chances”.

As we discover, Kenneth’s mother moved from the Bronx to Cranberry just before he was born. The most traumatic even in his life was coming home from school when he was only 10 to find his mother dead on the floor in their home. He was sent to an orphanage where his imaginary friend Bert first appeared to him. Bert is still with him 16 years later and their favourite pastime is to go to Wally’s, the oldest tiki lounge in New York, and drink mai tais. When Kenneth was old enough, the orphanage found him a job working in a used book store own by a grumpy man named Sam. This is the only job Kenneth has ever known. It, therefore, comes as a shock when Sam, a chain smoker with a bad heart, announces that he is selling the store and moving to Arizona.

This news is devastating because Kenneth’s life has been so restricted. He has never had to look for a job before and has no clue how to do it. As it happens, Corinna, one of the waitresses at Wally’s, tells Kenneth that Primary Trust, one of the two banks in town, is looking for tellers and urgers Kenneth to apply. He does apply with Bert backing him up, he succeeds and he becomes more friendly with Corinna. The problem is that the more friendly he becomes with Corinna, the less he sees Bert — until one day Bert disappears.

Initially, Primary Trust feels like a breath of fresh air. Until so many recent plays, it is not about identity politics, harrowing events, dinner parties gone wrong or the revealing of family secrets. It is simply the portrait of a lonely man who comes to believe in himself.

Unfortunately, as the action progresses, it also becomes clear that Booth has gone out of her way to avoid anything resembling conflict or tension — the two factors that make plays dramatic. We think that Kenneth will somehow suffer when he loses his job at the bookstore, but, in fact, he is given a job at the bank during his very first interview with Clay, the bank manager. Clay says that Kenneth somehow reminds him of his brother who sustained a head injury in a car crash.

As it turns out, Kenneth is a natural as a teller and soon wins the prize for the one who has the highest “solution numbers” of the year. The play might have been the portrait of a lonely man, but Kenneth runs into Corinna so frequently that a friendship gradually blooms.

The only crisis we see in the play itself is Kenneth’s distress after Bert disappears which causes Kenneth to become enraged at a bank client. We think that maybe this will become a source of friction with Clay. But no, Clay somehow completely understands and does not fire Kenneth for the incident.

All the real drama of Kenneth’s life seems to have occurred in the past when at the orphanage or in foster homes. It’s something Kenneth says is best left for another story which means that Booth wants to exclude it from her play. The result is a fine portrait of one unusual man’s rise to normality that is completely uneventful.

You think certainly something untoward will happen to this childlike man. Someone will take advantage of him, someone will insult him, someone will make fun of Bert. But no, none of this happens. Cranberry seems to be an idyllic spot where everyone who meets Kenneth is kind and helps him out. Kenneth seems to get drunk every night on mai tais, but even that habit has no negative consequences. Booth doesn’t even allow any dissention between Bert and Kenneth, even though, as different sides of Kenneth, they should have differing views. It is bizarre that a playwright would want to write so anodyne a play.

There is another Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a man with an imaginary friend that Booth has cited as one of her inspirations and that is Harvey from 1944 by Mary Chase. Both Kenneth in Booth and Elwood P. Dowd in Chase are loners. Kenneth’s imaginary friend is at least human, whereas Elwood’s is a 6-foot tall rabbit. Where Kenneth keeps Bert a secret, Elwood introduces his friend Harvey to everyone he meets. In Booth, Kenneth’s journey is from eccentricity to normality. In Chase, Elwood’s remains eccentric to the last and rejects a serum that would make him “normal”. In Booth the focus is entirely on Kenneth Elwood with no greater goal than lauding friendship. Chase also lauds friendship but her play brings up the larger topics of who decides who is sane and who is insane.

Booth’s play thus has much narrower parameters than does Chase’s. Nevertheless, it does provide a prime role for the actor playing Kenneth. Durae McFarlane, who made an enormously positive impression in Toronto in Annie Baker’s The Flick in 2019, seems born to play Kenneth. He convincingly plays a grown adult who is charmingly innocent and unworldly. McFarlane well distinguishes the more self-confident Kenneth from the extremely naïve Kenneth of the story he tells. McFarlane is an expert at playing social awkwardness and at expressing joy at simple pleasures. We only wish Booth had given Kenneth more to struggle against so that we could see more sides to Kenneth’s nature and more of McFarlane’s abilities.

Booth has given two other performers fine showcases for their talents but in a very different way from Kenneth. Both Ryan Hollyman and Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah play more than a dozen characters each from multiple members of the serving staff at Wally’s to various of Kenneth’s clients at the bank to larger roles. Hollyman’s two main roles are those of Sam, the owner of the used book shop, and Clay, the manager of Primary Trust. Hollyman gives the two completely different voices and body language. His Sam is tired, gruff and unwell while his Clay is energetic, open-minded and fit, still dreaming of his glory days as a high school quarterback.

Roberts-Abdullah demonstrates a mastery of numerous dialects and attitudes as the waitresses and the bank clients, but her main role is that of Corinna. Roberts-Abdullah nicely details Corinna’s move from a simple server-patron status with Kenneth to that of a concerned listener to friend. Corinna already has a steady boyfriend so Booth clearly limits how far the friendship between Corinna and Kenneth will go. Yet, Roberts-Abdullah radiates such warmth and kindness it is clear that Kenneth has gained a real friend which Booth sees as progress over Kenneth’s need for an imaginary friend.

As Bert, Peter N. Bailey has little to do except to appear supportive of Kenneth and to encourage him to try new new things. I longed for the two to get into some kind of debate on a topic, but Booth never allows that to happen.

The least rewarding role is that of the onstage musician. Booth says that she considers this performer as the fifth character in the play, but at least as Cherissa Richards has staged it, that never appears to be the case. Lawrence Libor is in a push-on tiki-style hut with an open cut-out. Since we cannot see Libor’s arms, we have to assume he is playing music live, even though he could just as well be serving as a DJ. Lighting designer Imogen Wilson leaves Libor in the gloom in the background so we can’t even see him well. Strangely enough, sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne has music play even when Libor is absent from his hut, thus rather ruining the entire concept of live musical accompaniment.

Julie Fox’s set well captures the look of a somewhat run-down small town but is far too grandiose and elaborate for the desperately simple story that Booth is telling. Why have two two-storey towers and a telephone pole for a tale that represents Kenneth’s memory of what happened to him 15 years earlier? A minimalist décor suggesting the various locations would be much more appropriate than Fox’s large, solid set pieces that suggest action on a much grander scale will occur.

In trying to create a sweet, gentle story about a childlike adult finally growing into adulthood, Booth has removed most of the elements that would make such a story moving, exciting or even interesting. The performances of the cast and especially of McFarlane, are what keep the show afloat, but compared with other winners of the Pulitzer Prize like Topdog/Underdog (2001) by Suzan-Lori Parks, Primary Trust offers little complexity and little to challenge an audience’s pre-existing ideas.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Peter N. Bailey as Bert, Durae McFarlane as Kenneth, Ryan Hollyman as Waiter and Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah as Waitress; Ryan Hollyman as Clay, Durae McFarlane as Kenneth and Peter N. Bailey as Bert; Durae McFarlane as Kenneth and Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah as Corinna; Durae McFarlane as Kenneth. © 2026 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.grandtheatre.com.