Primary Trust
Eboni Booth
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Introducing himself as Kenneth, he also introduces us to his hometown, Cranberry, New York, “forty miles east of Rochester,” taking us on a tour of the post office, two banks, a newly opened wine shop, on down past Main Street to “my favorite place on earth, Wally’s” — New York’s oldest tiki hut bar with nightly two-for-one mai tais. His upfront introduction to Cranberry immediately brings to mind the Stage Manager’s initial description of Grover’s Corners in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; and like in that timeless classic, there is something about this Kenneth that seems immediately familiar, kind, and charming — a kind of Everyman whom we feel we already know and like.
And so opens Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, the 2024 Pulitzer Prize Award for Drama — a comic drama in which thirty-eight-year-old Kenneth traverses a time-jumping journey with many starts, stops, and surprises to find friendship, to find security, and ultimately to find himself in which small chances taken lead to big payoffs unexpected but well deserved. Under the heartfelt, imaginative, and attention-to-detail direction of Jeffrey Lo, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley brightens its stage with a feel-good, engaging, and impactful Primary Trust in which the concept of community and its power to accept, heal, and empower is a timely message so needed now more than ever.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Primary Trust continues through March 29, 2026, in a ninety minute (no intermission) regional premiere production by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road Palo Alto CA. Tickets are available online at www.theatreworks.org, by email at boxoffice@theatreworks.org, or by phone Tuesday – Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. at 1-877-662-TWSV (8978).
Photo Credit: Kevin Berne
