Eboni Booth's Pulitzer Prize winning play "Primary Trust" is one of the best written and structured plays of the past decade. It is a deeply empathetic and progressively revealing look at an emotionally damaged young man who struggles to find connection and community in his small Northeastern town. Much like Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which "Primary Trust" seems to evoke at times, the challenge for successfully staging this work is to get the tone right so as to evoke an emotionally empathetic audience response.
The production of "Primary Trust" currently playing (through March 23) at Dallas Theater Center features pitch-perfect staging that precisely navigates the right tone throughout its 90 or so minutes of running time. Critical to the success of this show are the astute direction by one of the Dallas area's finest directors, Sasha Maya Ada, and the uniformly excellent four person cast. Of particularly note is the astounding performance of Lee George as Kenneth who had me on his side from the moment he uttered his first line and he did not hit a false note throughout. And I cannot help but commend the multi-character portrayals of Tiana Kaye Blair, who deftly hits her characters' comedic notes without going too broad, enabling her to credibly portray one of her character's dramatic moments as the play progresses.
The physical staging is much more minimalist than the New York Roundabout Theatre off-Broadway premiere that I saw in 2023, but the intimate theater space, spare set, and appropriately timed music underscoring, enabled me to better focus on Ms. Booth's beautifully written and perfectly delivered words. It made this an even deeper theatrical experience for me.
This is essential must-see theater if you are in the DFW area over the next two weeks. It will tug at your heartstrings while at the same time affirming your faith in humanity, something for which most of us are now in critical need.
