All the hype at the moment is about the Tony Awards, and who will win Broadway’s most glittering prizes. But New York City’s best new play—truly, it is five-star exceptional, book a ticket right now—is happening off-Broadway, a bunny-hop from the pulsing neons of Times Square.
Primary Trust (Laura Pels Theatre, to July 2), as beautifully written by Eboni Booth as it is directed by Knud Adams, is a 95-minute, intermissionless, buffed-to-gleaming jewel, following the life of a handsome, charming man named Kenneth (Emmy-nominated The Good Place star William Jackson Harper), who—capsized early in life by a horrifically traumatic event—struggles, mulls, deflects, and cheerfully and not-so-cheerfully interrogates how to progress with his life in the suburb of Cranberry, New York.
Part of the seductive pull of this Roundabout Theatre Company production—developed by Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago—is watching Kenneth periodically leave a play’s traditional confines to address us. This also makes the play hit even harder because we become his cheerleaders-by-association. Kenneth takes us very directly on the journey he himself undertakes confronting past trauma, and embracing then rejecting self-delusion and self-isolation. He/Harper is a beguiling storyteller and protagonist—blunt, honest, sweet, vulnerable, strong, soft, and sharp.
Source: The Daily Beast
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