To love is to experience loss; in fact, to live is to be changed by loss. To know these truths is to be human, whether we like it or not.
But to to feel them anew, by moving through the time and space of another’s experience, can deepen our understanding of and appreciation for what it means to be human.
This is the powerful effect of Primary Trust, Eboni Booth’s 2024 Pulitzer-winning play, directed with grace by Chuma Gault at Hope Repertory Theatre.
Four exceptional actors with a simple set by Nicholas J. Taboni, effective lighting by Mads West, and important sound by Daniella Brown, create the world of Cranberry, New York—the fictionalized Rochester suburb, population 15,000, where the motto is “Welcome friend, you’re right on time”. Time is ever present, with a clock perpetually at 5 p.m. hung high over center stage, and the repetitive ding of a call bell to demarcate scene and time shifts—a perpetual reminder that time marches on.
Here 38-year-old Kenneth, our thoughtful, anxious, endearingly awkward hero, speaks directly to the audience and plays out dynamic scenes of his rather unremarkable life, with his bosses, customers, servers, and singular friend, whom we come to learn is imaginary. He’s socially anxious and deeply lonely, with terrific observational powers and a heightened awareness of the past, present, and future, made especially poignant in his retelling of his origin trauma and the monologue that opens and closes the play in which he envisions the hometown places and spaces he knows and loves leveled 15 years from now, with condominiums built in their place.
It’s not so much what happens externally in terms of plot between those monologues that make the play so compelling—though watching Kenneth drink Mai Tai after Mai Tai at Wally’s, his favorite Tiki bar, lose his 20-year job at a bookstore and muster the courage to apply for a job at a bank, make real friends with a cocktail waitress, try martinis for the first time, and nearly lose it all in a work confrontation effectively keeps our attention through incredibly well-written dialogue, excellent timing, and inspired performances—it’s the ways he navigates each painstaking moment, the internal struggle and meaning Kenneth makes of his life and his world, that are so deeply moving.
Correy West brings Kenneth to life so poignantly, telling and playing out this devastatingly guileless character’s story with such verisimilitude, it’s impossible not to feel his stakes as if they are our own. Subtle gestures, weighted pauses, genuine reactions all make this character seem utterly real.
The other actors on stage also create such convincing characters and emotions it feels as if they’re not acting at all. Anthony J. Hamilton is a terrifically warm Bert, the imaginary friend who guides, supports, challenges Kenneth in ways that make him as real a friend as anyone could hope for. Chip DuFord captures the strange gruffness and tenderheartedness of Kenneth’s two bosses, among other roles, bringing sparkling humanity and humor in unexpected places. Danai Mandebvu changes hats literally and figuratively so many times you lose count of the characters but never lose track of who she’s embodying physically and emotionally. She’s especially good as Corrina, the first real friend Kenneth makes, and their scenes together are beautiful.
Whether or not we identify with the particularities of Kenneth’s life, we can’t help but recognize ourselves in his humanity—the ways devastating loss is what makes us grow, and how things inevitably change and yet life goes on. Simple truisms abound and are surprisingly important reminders: “The sky is blue, whatcha gonna do?” and “Even though it hurts, love is very good” among them.
Sometimes the greatest dramas are the quiet ones that show us life is more than the sum of our external accomplishments: the real revolution comes with the painstaking triumphs of our internal struggles.
Primary Trust
Hope Repertory Theatre
July 10-31
https://hope.edu/offices/hope-summer-repertory-theatre/
