Primary Trust
Writer: Eboni Booth
Director: Darren Yap
Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli
June 19 – July 12, 2025
As the 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times Critics’ Pick, Primary Trust is considered an unusual choice for both accolades – it is charming, small scale and personal in contrast to the weighty themes typical of contemporary theatre.
Darren Yap directs this production with a gentle hand, bringing to the fore the warmth and humour of the small-town characters who support and encourage each other.
Kenneth (Albert Mwangi) is likeable and seemingly contented in Cranberry, a small-town community in upstate New York. He’s now 38, having worked some years at Sam’s bookshop. Every evening after work he frequents the Happy Hour at Wally’s tiki bar where he enjoys the two-for-one mai tais with his friend Bert (Charles Allen). We soon realise that Bert is an “imaginary friend”, existing only in Kenneth’s mind.
This seems like a psychological oddity as Kenneth does not appear, on the surface, to be unstable in any way. He seems satisfied enough with his simple life, but perhaps loneliness and lack of friends is taking its toll. Soon Kenneth must weather a major change – his elderly boss Sam announces that he’ll be selling the bookshop and moving to Arizona for health reasons.
Faced by what would be an upsetting event to his tranquil lifestyle, he reveals that at the age of ten he found his mother dead. He is rescued by a social worker named Bert, who continues to protect the young orphan until he reaches adulthood. It is soon clear that the “imaginary” Bert appears to Kenneth at times of uncertainty and stress, and retreats, with the excuse that he has other matters to attend to, when things are going well. It’s a psychological safety net which protects Kenneth when he is in a fragile state.
But bigger and brighter things are looming – Kenneth successfully applies for a position at Primary Trust, one of the town’s two banks, and finds it much to his liking. His boss, the jovial Clay, is delighted with his progress and predicts he will be the top salesman for the year. It’s exhilarating to watch the once unassuming Kenneth discover his latent abilities.
Still, the underlying fragility is there. When an episode with a very demanding customer triggers a major nervous meltdown, Kenneth believes he will be sacked and goes into hiding. However, his kindly boss manages to find him and calm him down. As Kenneth proudly holds up his award as “Best Seller for the Year”, one could be excused for feeling a touch tearful.
Angela Mahlatjie is kept frantically busy playing a revolving door of waitresses at Wally’s, then a variety of customers at the bank, while Peter Kovitz handles the gravel-voiced Sam, the football-mad interviewer and the kindly manager, Clay, with aplomb. Charles Allen, of course, is enigmatic as the imaginary Bert.
No doubt the audience is left slightly teary but uplifted to see a good-natured, if fractured, personality achieve against unlikely odds and Primary Trust does that, with charm, warmth and gentle humour.
