‘Primary Trust,’ at McCarter Theatre Center, is a low-key charmer

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DeShawn Harold Mitchell stars in “Primary Trust” at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton.

“Primary Trust,” the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning play that The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton is currently presenting, with direction by Timothy Douglas, is set in the fictional upstate New York town of Cranberry. Beautifully evoked by set designer Tony Cisek (check out the photo above), Cranberry is located near Rochester and has a population of 15,000. It is a place — says the show’s main character, Kenneth (who is Black) — that is mostly white. “Most of the time everyone treats me fine,” he tells the audience, early on. “Although there was that one night at the dairy farm where …”

He pauses, then demurs. “But that’s another story,” he says, and keeps the story to himself.

I thought maybe playwright Eboni Booth was setting us up for some big moment to come, later in the play. But no, we never find out what happened at the dairy farm. Booth portrays Cranberry, overall, as a warm, welcoming place — the kind of benign suburban American city where, as Bruce Springsteen sings in his “Long Walk Home,” “nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone.”

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DeShawn Harold Mitchell, left, and Shane Taylor in “Primary Trust.”

Kenneth, played with beguiling earnestness by DeShawn Harold Mitchell, is an endearing oddball: low-key and shy, with a life that has developed a routine that he has no interest in breaking. He works in a bookstore and — every night, without fail — attends Happy Hour at the same tiki restaurant, Wally’s, sipping two-for-one Mai Tais with his only friend, Bert (Shane Taylor). Kenneth is single, in his late ’30s, and doesn’t seem to have any romantic history (at least, none that he shares with us in his occasional fourth wall-breaking monologues).

He also lives, to some extent, in a world of his own imagination, as we learn in a revelation that occurs too early in the show to really qualify as a twist.

Kenneth’s air of wide-eyed, childlike innocence and slow, deliberate way of speaking made me think of “Forrest Gump,” though “Primary Trust” is ultimately more of an “Our Town”-like tale about appreciating every moment that life has to offer.

Booth shakes up Kenneth’s life by having his bookstore boss Sam (Peter Gisgaier) announce that he is going to have to close it, because of a health issue. Kenneth lands on his feet, though, with the support of a friendly new Wally’s waitress, Corrina (Lilia Oben), finding a job that suits him well: He becomes a teller at Primary Trust, one of Cranberry’s two banks, and learns that his cheerful disposition makes him a natural salesman of the bank’s financial services.

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Lilian Oben with Peter Bisgaier, center, and DeShawn Harold Mitchell in “Primary Trust.”

Oben also plays many other Wally’s waitresses and, in a dizzying tour-de-force of physical comedy, portrays a series of bank customers, wildly different in character, in rapid succession. Gisgaier also adds some nice comedic touches as Kenneth’s jovial, loud, supportive bank manager Clay (an ex-jock) and a strongly accented waiter in a French restaurant where Kenneth and Corrina go to have a drink. (Strictly platonically; Corrina has a boyfriend and Kenneth wouldn’t dream of trying to steal her away.)

Kenneth eventually does talk about a horrifically traumatic childhood incident that may be responsible, or at least partly responsible, for him holding onto his childlike way of looking at the world. But Booth’s message is ultimately an upbeat and hopeful one.

Kenneth — and all the play’s other characters, for that matter — live very ordinary lives and don’t see the need for anything more. After starting her new job at Wally’s, for instance, Corrina has this exchange with Kenneth:

Corrina: “I was looking for a while. Things are pretty tight in town, and I didn’t want to have to commute into Rochester.”
Kenneth: “Oh, me neither.”
Corrina: “I don’t have a car. The buses are just …”
Kenneth: “Oh, man, they’re the pits.”

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Lilian Oben and DeShawn Harold Mitchell in “Primary Trust.”

A tale of wild ambition, this is not.

Honestly, if I saw this play without knowing anything about it, I would have been surprised to learn that it had received a Pulitzer Prize. Not that it doesn’t deserve it, but it’s sweet and charming; subtle and small in scale; more personal than political. It doesn’t really make a statement — certainly nothing bold and flashy.

These aren’t really characteristics I associate with that prize. The Pulitzer judges saw them as strengths, though, describing the play this way: “”A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”

Or, in other words … these days, maybe writing something so unassuming and uplifting really qualifies as bold, after all.

The McCarter Theatre Center will present “Primary Trust” at its Berlind Theater through May 25. Visit mccarter.org.

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