Trinity Rep’s production of Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, directed with gentle precision by resident company member Tatyana-Marie Carlo, offers a softly illuminated evening of theatre, one that locates grace in the smallest human gestures. Led by a deeply felt performance from Taavon Gamble as Kenneth, this Pulitzer Prize–winning play unfolds in a sleepy Rochester suburb, yet its emotional terrain is far more expansive.
Kenneth has lived the same routine for 20 years, working as a bookkeeper in a now-closed bookstore and spending his evenings with Bert, an imaginary companion who hovers somewhere between a coping mechanism and a guardian angel. As the script notes, “He is counseled by his imaginary friend Bert,” a line that captures both the tenderness and the fragility of Kenneth’s inner world. When a sudden layoff forces him to seek work, on his own for the first time since childhood, the play becomes a study in what it means to step—haltingly, fearfully toward change.
Booth’s writing invites comparison to two American touchstones. Like It’s a Wonderful Life, Primary Trust uses a figure of magical realism to illuminate a man who cannot see his own worth. George Bailey’s crisis of identity and his supernatural guide find a modern echo in Kenneth’s journey. Both men believe they are insignificant until an otherworldly presence (Clarence for George, Bert for Kenneth) reveals the quiet impact of their existence. The play and the movie share a belief that self-worth is not bestowed by achievement but discovered through connection; an ordinary life can be quietly heroic.
And in its direct address, its gentle excavation of community, and its insistence that the smallest lives matter, the play nods toward Our Town. Kenneth’s routines, his favorite bar, his bookkeeping habits, his conversations with Bert, mirror Wilder’s devotion to the beauty of the everyday. Both plays argue that the ordinary is never small; rather, it is the architecture of a life.
Kenneth’s monologues, delivered with disarming sincerity, recall Wilder’s Stage Manager, guiding us not through Grover’s Corners, but through the fragile journey of one man’s survival.
Like these two classic small town stories, Primary Trust is less concerned with narrative twists than with emotional unfolding. Its 90-minute arc mirrors the structural simplicity of Our Town and the moral clarity of It’s a Wonderful Life: a man confronts himself, sees his life anew, and steps forward changed.
Gamble’s performance anchors the production. His Kenneth is not pitiable but precise: a man shaped by early trauma, long accustomed to disappearing into routine, who discovers, almost by accident, or rather through sheer hard work, keeping his nose to the grindstone, that he is capable of more than he imagined. Marina Tejada brings warmth and authenticity to Carina, the waitress whose casual suggestion leads Kenneth to apply at the town’s bank, Primary Trust. Rudy Cabrera and Daniel Shtivelberg round out the ensemble with clarity and restraint, allowing the play’s emotional stakes to emerge without sentimentality.
Carlo’s direction leans into the play’s intimacy. She trusts the silence, the hesitations, the small ruptures in Kenneth’s emotional armor. The result is a production that never forces its metaphors. Instead, it lets the audience arrive at them naturally: that imaginary friends can be the voices we need most; that hard work can be a lifeline; that kindness, even from strangers, can alter a life’s trajectory.
At 90 minutes and without an intermission, Primary Trust is billed as a one-act, but it carries the fullness of a contemporary feature-length drama. Its impact lies not in plot twists but in the slow, steady revelation of a man learning to believe in himself. In a cultural moment saturated with noise, Booth’s play, and Trinity Rep’s tender rendering of it, reminds us that the quietest stories can resonate the loudest.
Directed by Resident Company Member Tatyana-Marie Carlo. Featuring resident company member Taavon Gamble, guest artists Rudy Cabrera and Marina Tejada, and Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program student Daniel Shtivelberg. This production runs through May 10 in the Dowling Theatre. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit trinityrep.com.
Judith Clinton is a playwright, producer and author, whose work explores myth, and transformation. Her plays and stories reflect her belief that storytelling can both heal and ignite change. She is Co-Executive Director of the Rhode Island Theatre Makers Roundtable.
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