Primary Trust Opens the Heart Strings with Feel Good Vibes

 

Malic Maat as Bert, Bria Walker-Rhoze and Monteze Freeland as Kenneth in Primary Trust Photo Credit all to Maranie R. Staab

Since he first set foot on a Pittsburgh stage what, a decade or so ago, Monteze Freeland has wowed audiences as an actor, director and theater administrator. And while I’ve been able to catch two of the productions in which he showed off his Thespian skills, I have to admit his latest role as Kenneth in Primary Trust is the one that impressed me most.

In creating his character of a 38-year-old African-America male living in Cranberry, New York, just east of Rochester, Freeland as Kenneth seems quite comfortably settled in a routine and repetitive life following a childhood trauma as a 10-year-old.

Early in the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Eboni Booth, he recalls the anguished terror he felt each day worrying that his mother wouldn’t return from her day job. His emotional life shattered when he returned home one day only to find his mother dead. The aftermath of his grief proved a crippling life experience.

Malic Maat as Bert, Bria Walker-Rhoze and Monteze Freeland as Kenneth in Primary Trust 

When we first see him in the opening scene, he’s sitting in Wally’s, the local watering hole with a Tiki bar vibe drinking mai tais with his imaginary friend, Bert, played by Malic Maat, who acts as Kenneth’s emotional crutch.

Twenty-eight years is a long time between Kenneth’s traumatic loss and his current life routine that has him settled into a resigned acceptance as a worker in a bookstore, where he can depend on a 25-cent raise once a year and have Thanksgiving dinner at the book store owner’s home.

Monteze Freeland, Malic Maat and Sam Turich

Kenneth’s settled life becomes unglued, however, when his boss (Sam Turich) lets him know out of the blue that he’s closing shop and heading off to Arizona for health reasons. Still reeling from the shock, he’s informed by Corrina, a waitress at the bar (Bria Walker-Rhoze) of a job opening at a local bank, Primary Trust.

After applying for the job, he trepidatiously arrives for an interview with the socially outgoing manager (again Sam Turich). Stumbling on initial questions, he redeems himself with the assistance of Bert, who coaches him from the sidelines, unseen, of course, by the bank manager. Partially because Kenneth reminds the manager of his brother, he gets the job, which opens him up to a new world.

Monteze Freeland, Sam Turich and malic Maat in Primary Trust

Soon, he becomes one of Primary Trusts’s most productive tellers. We see him set production records while enjoying his interplay with Walker-Rhoze’s string of customers who enter and exit the bank.

One day, however, he encounters a particularly vexing customer which provokes a mental breakdown. In spite of his subsequent erratic behavior and unprofessional treatment of the customer, the manager keeps him on. However, I found this easy forgiveness a quite glaringly unexpected and unusual insertion into an otherwise lucid and keenly written script.

In multiple roles, Walker-Rhoze is amazing at her several turns as both bank customers and waiters at Wally’s. Her colorful and very funny takes as the series of waiters is ingenious and her variations on several bank customers show her skill at nuanced characterization.

Equally commendable in multiple roles, Turich shifts chameleon-like from a hardboiled bookstore owner with a soft spot of Kenneth to an animated bank manager to a starchy waiter in a French restaurant where Kenneth has his first martini or two.

          As good as the supporting actors are Freeland and Maat stand out even more. First off, he two actors are physically unalike; Freeland is tall and hefty, Maat is short and lanky.  This Mutt and Jeff duo both create real-to-life characters so natural and devoid of artifice, so comfortable in their roles, they pull you into the story line and never let go.

Up to the high quality of the direction by Kyle Haden and the actors is the work of the tech crew.  Scenic designer, Antonio Troy Ferron, creates a three-dimensional quality to the setting with his “hanging and hovering” town buildings that provide the requisite sketchiness for what proves to be a memory play.

Lighting designer, Bryan Keith Ealey, introduces some effective  visual time elements with his red and green stoplights that change colors at appropriate moments to the sound of a strike on a xylophone key, a device I credit to the work of sound designer, Chris Lane.

Length matters. When I heard that the show runs for a good 90 minutes without intermission, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to manage the show’s chronological parameters without having to answer a call of nature. Thankfully no problem in that regard. The entire play swept me up so thoroughly, I became unaware of the time, and the play was over before I knew it. It was one of the best hour and a halfs I spent this year.

Nudging my way into the post production, opening night party, I got to talk to Maat who told me Primary Trust has been the most performed play of 2025. Still wondering if the tears that rolled down Freeland’s cheeks during his final lines of the play were genuine or artistically induced, Maat, when asked, told me that Freeland teared up every time just as much at the end of each rehearsal.

Bria Walker-Rhoze and Monteze Freeland  in Primary Trust

If you want to be introduced to an actor capable of creating one of the most authentic theatrical characters I’ve ever experienced, catch a future performance of Primary Trust. As I told Freeland at the after party, I decided to make his endearing Kenneth my BBIF, my Best Forever Imaginary Friend. Once you see the show, you just might end up doing the same.

Primary Trust, a Pittsburgh Public Theater production, is at the O’Reilly Theater in Downtown Pittsburgh, through April 12. For tickets, phone 412-316-1600 or https://ppt.org/production/100484/list_performances.