Theatre 2026: Primary Trust @ Crow's Theatre

Primary Trust, the last show of Crow’s Theatre’s 2025/26 season, is a touching tale of a lonely, socially awkward 38-year-old man named Kenneth, who deals with the childhood trauma of being orphaned at a young age after the death of his mother by forming a consistent routine which he has stuck to for over two decades. This involves working at an old bookstore, followed by Happy Hour Mai Tai cocktails and snacks at his favourite joint “Wally’s”, which is the last tiki bar in a fictional small-town just outside of Rochester, New York. We watch him follow his regime, signaled by a loud “ding” (like the sound made by a call bell) to mark the repetition of each day. He has a second coping method that takes a few scenes to become apparent, although the clues are there from the start.

Kenneth’s structured life is turned upside down when the owner of the bookstore decides to sell and move to Arizona for health reasons. Suddenly unemployed and cast adrift, Kenneth’s turmoil is punctuated by more frequent dings. Forced out of his comfort zone, he slowly learns to reintegrate with the real world, landing a job as a teller in the bank “Primary Trust”, the competitor to the bank that his mother used to work at, and even more slowly learning how to form friendships. It makes me wonder if “Primary Trust” has additional meaning than just the name of the bank but rather reflects Kenneth’s journey to learn to trust new people outside of his limited world.

The play is powered by the star performance by actor Durae McFarlane, who we first encountered in Crow Theatre’s 2019 production of Annie Baker’s play “The Flick”.  As Kenneth, McFarlane’s smile lights up the entire stage when he is happy and contorts in agony when he is distressed.  What makes this play special is the way that it eschews typical tropes including the stereotypical jock-bully or a forced romance. Instead, we get a quiet, heartfelt depiction of one man’s introspection as he searches for connection and belonging.

This has been the first show that we watched in a while at one of Crow’s Theatre’s flexibly configurable spaces where the stage was set up with stadium seating. While this is typical for most other theatres, it felt almost jarring at Crow’s where a thrust (3-sided) or in-the-round seating has become more of the norm.  The main set pieces include the run-down looking building representing the old bookstore, the structure with a lit-up neon sign and fringe curtain in the entrance that becomes Wally’s Tiki Bar, and a third building tucked behind that only revealed the letters “UST” from our seats which turned out to be the Primary Trust bank. Seating for the tiki bar and a teller’s counter were also pushed onto and off the stage as the scenes changed. But what caught my eye was a stoplight mounted high up on the right side of the stage. The light went from green to yellow to red as the show was about to start, possibly acting as a visual cue to the audience to take their seats.  Then throughout the show, the lights rotated between green, red and off.  It is possible that this was just used as lighting for the stage, but I became fixated on wondering if there was more meaning to the colours being used.  I was probably just overthinking things and after a while, I became so engrossed in the story that I stopped noticing.

I am finding that so many of the plays being mounted these days are emotionally taxing dramas dealing with trauma, grief, mental illness, and bleak or even horrific existences. This is reflected in the audience advisory section in the programme for each play that we watch.  The list seems to get longer and longer.  While by no means a comedy, the advisory for this play is relatively mild (mature language and themes, descriptions of childhood trauma, simulated smoking and heavy alcohol consumption). You find yourself rooting for this character, empathizing in his despair and cheering for his successes. From that respect, I thoroughly enjoyed this play but I still long for a straight-out comedy to help transport me from the depressing global state of our world today.

For each play, the lobby bar at Crow’s Theatre comes up with one or more “signature drinks” that reflect on the theme or content of show.  For Primary Trust, that drink was integral to the plot, and so, the Mai Thai was on sale. Rich ordered one and said it was a good one!