Marc Miller takes a look at Primary Trust at Roundabout Theatre Company:
Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York–the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a couple of hundred upstate hamlets. Its citizens are unremarkable, and that includes Kenneth (William Jackson Harper), the troubled 38-year-old who will be our protagonist. This being an Eboni Booth play, we know that Primary Trust will have a double meaning, a chronicle of not only small-town banking in an era "before smart phones," as the program has it, but Kenneth's growing confidence in himself. This is a small, gentle, life-affirming drama that many people are going to love. And I almost did, too, but for a couple of quirks in Kenneth's character that keep Primary Trust from entirely adding up. |
