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Primary Trust by Eboni Booth will play its last week of a nearly monthlong run at Portland Center Stage. The title refers to a bank, one of the main settings, but also the main question of the show: Can we depend on one another?
The heartwarming but not saccharine story unfolds at first like a storybook, but the story is anything but simple. The carefully curated production guides the audience on the path to both the truth about the characters and what it truly means to trust each other.
Like many plays before it, Primary Trust is about a small town and community. It tells the story of Kenneth (Larry Owens), a haunted man who longs so deeply for true friendship, but finds it hard to break out of a cycle of happy hours and rejecting social invitations. When he loses his job, he’s forced to expand his small circle and, as a result, finds his way to connection. Owens—a multihyphenate artist in theater, television, film, music and comedy—is perhaps best known for a recurring guest role on Abbott Elementary. He leads the production with equal parts charisma and heartbreak.
Kenneth directly addresses the audience throughout the play, which endears him to playgoers from the start. Owens described the character in the show’s program, saying, “Kenneth vacillates between the opaque and the overshare.” Owens’ performance of Kenneth walks the line between a caricature of a cartoonishly childlike person (who overshares) and a deeply traumatized grown man (who is opaque about his feelings) without either falling over into a maudlin portrayal of a victim or letting the weight of the character’s past get swept under a rug. At many moments in the show, Owens had the audience in the palm of his hand. When he needed to be, he was loud and bright, responding directly to the audience. At others, he retreated into himself.
Owens is supported by Shareen Jacobs, who plays most of the townspeople, adding and shedding wigs, hats and costume pieces to change between parts. While she does, Kenneth emulates the other characters’ vibes, which makes them trust him. However, he can only be himself around a couple of people. One of these turns out to be Corinne (another Jacobs character), an unlikely friend to Kenneth bonded by their similar energy.
Rounding out the cast includes Austin Michael Young’s straightforward but empathetic portrayal of Kenneth’s longtime friend, Bert (who has a heartbreaking secret); Ted Rooney—yes, Maury from Gilmore Girls—who plays numerous characters, including both of Kenneth’s bosses and a comedic turn as a fancy French waiter; and a musician (Peter Knudsen) who provides mood music, which sometimes isn’t the mood Kenneth wants.
The Pulitzer-winning play, unlike older “small town plays” your high school might have put on (we see you Our Town), takes a little getting used to stylistically. At first, it seems as if it’s going to be all meta, a quirky story about a nice guy in a bright sweater. But as the play moves out of the initial moments, the darkness behind Kenneth’s smile begins to seep through.
The production passes time with a conventional bell-like ding at the bank where Kenneth works and rapid light changes that make objects appear as if by magic. At first, this speedy pace comes off as humorous, adding to the twee world of the imaginary small town. Paired with the cartoon map on the proscenium and a rotating set, it gives the effect that we are playing with toys; the characters are our figurines that move between spaces in a play set.
However, the repeated use of the convention, after a while, seemed less playful and more emblematic of the monotony of adult life. Then, as we learn more about Kenneth’s past, he breaks out of his various patterns and the play breaks out of its previous shape.
Primary Trust, while sometimes sad, has a hopeful tone, which is welcome in a landscape where so much of the time “serious theater” is borderline tragic past enjoyment. The play itself is more complex than it appears at the top, and the production is thoughtful, well done and, yes, enjoyable.
SEE IT: Primary Trust at Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday–Sunday, 2 pm Saturday and Sunday, through Oct. 26. $25–$91.
