For Durae McFarlane, the power of Primary Trust lies in its simple central conceit: that kindness can change a life.
The actor leads Crow’s Theatre and the Grand Theatre’s co-production of Eboni Booth’s 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama as Kenneth, a solitary man whose perfectly safe, carefully structured world is disrupted when the local bookshop where he has worked for 20 years suddenly has to close. When that stability disappears, he is forced to embark on a courageous journey to confront the fears and personal tragedy that have shaped his life.
Subverting expectations
Since Primary Trust premiered at London’s Grand Theatre earlier this year, this exquisite, low-key production directed by Cherissa Richards has snuck up on audiences. “Eboni Booth has written a beautiful play that is heartwarming, funny, and deeply affecting,” McFarlane affirms. “Getting to step into the world that she has created is such a joyful experience, and playing Kenneth is a real privilege.”
Richards’ production balances the play’s humour, magical realism, and emotional depth with remarkable assurance. Julie Fox’s absolutely gorgeous set of a neighbourhood evokes both the comfort and fragility of Kenneth’s carefully ordered existence, while the wonderfully chameleonic ensemble cast creates the kind of community that we yearn for, in the form of characters like Bert (Peter N. Bailey), Corrina (Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah), Clay and Sam (Ryan Hollyman), and a musician (Danilo Reyes). The show—and the performances—resonate deeply.
Although the play explores unresolved grief, childhood trauma and addiction, Booth approaches those themes with compassion, and subverts expectations by turning Primary Trust continually toward connection, humour, and hope. The result is an unexpectedly uplifting theatrical experience that invites audiences of all generations to reflect on what it means to choose kindness and care for one another and to affirm our capacity for humanity.
The Kenneth (and the kindness) of it all
At the centre of it all is McFarlane. His Kenneth is simply magnetic.
Wide-eyed and armed with a sweet, shy smile that can illuminate the farthest corners of the theatre, McFarlane captures the shades of Kenneth’s deep vulnerability, uncertainty, and crippling loneliness without ever reducing him to those qualities. He renders with heartrending sensitivity Kenneth’s distrust of the world and his reliance on coping mechanisms that keep genuine connection at bay. Watching him take the risk of gradually opening himself up to the kindness offered by others is the production’s greatest pleasure and deepest emotional reward.
For McFarlane, the role presented challenges unlike any he had previously encountered. “Kenneth experiences a lot through the run of the play, and getting to show so many aspects of Kenneth is both a treat and a test of my abilities as an actor,” he notes. And he is speaking about more than Kenneth’s journey of grief, trauma and healing.. “One of the things that this role asked of me as an actor that I haven’t really done in a play is talking directly to the audience,” he says. “I’m mostly used to talking to other actors, but in a lot of moments throughout the play, the audience is my scene partner.”
Happily, smiles McFarlane, he has done “a bunch of clown work, which is all about being in communication with the audience and allowing yourself to flop and be unsuccessful in front of people”. “That clown training makes this experience a lot less daunting than it would have been a couple of years ago.”
What has stayed most profoundly with McFarlane throughout the process is the play’s insistence on kindness. As an audience, we brace ourselves for cruelty, but the people around Kenneth do not dismiss him simply because of his awkwardness or uncertainty. Instead, in their own ways, they make space for him exactly as he is. “I think that is something we can use more of in the current world we live in: more genuine kindness and more real connection,” he says simply.
Meeting the present moment
McFarlane believes this generosity “resonates because, in our current cultural moment, people generally understand how trauma and hardship can shape our lives and affect how we see the world.” With Primary Trust, they get a kind of case study: “Throughout the play, we see a person who has experienced some real difficulty, slowly start to open up to the world around him, even though it’s scary and hard.”
This simple character arc is almost infinitely relevant in 2026: “I think a lot of people can relate to the struggle of trying to grow, even though their own story may be different than Kenneth’s,” he says. “Everyone has their own difficulties,” and the play’s title (which is the name of a bank in the world of the show) points toward the solution, as demonstrated by the journey at the centre of the play. Kenneth begins the story mistrustful of the world and insulated by all his routines. But over the course of the play, he slowly learns what it means to trust other people again, and discovers that kindness can be a foundation for the future, rather than a risk.
This abiding belief in kindness also informs one of the play’s most striking choices. While McFarlane believes Kenneth’s story is universal, he believes that by making him a Black man, Booth is deliberately challenging familiar assumptions about who gets to occupy the centre of a story like this. “In our world, we’re used to seeing Black men portrayed in very specific ways: often met with suspicion, with tension, or with some level of violence—because that is a reality that many Black men face,” he says.
“Kenneth doesn’t quite fit into the world. He’s awkward, uncertain, and vulnerable. And yet, rather than being met with the conflict or danger we might expect, he is met with kindness, care, and compassion.” For McFarlane, this is “revolutionary”: “Eboni is reimagining what the world could be, rather than just showing us how it is. For audiences who feel in their bodies the fear of what could happen to a person like Kenneth, watching that expectation be subverted can be healing.”
Staying true: in life and on stage
The actor, whom Toronto audiences may remember from his performance in The Flick at Crow’s Theatre and Outside the March, has recently expanded his screen career. He can currently be seen opposite Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen in Peacock’s The Miniature Wife. Working in film and television, he says, has sharpened his understanding of truthfulness in performance. “The camera smells anything untrue,” he smiles. “In theatre, you can sometimes get away with moments that aren’t fully connected. On camera, you can’t. That has taught me to never phone anything in, and also stay active and connected to the moment and my scene partner.”
A commitment to truthfulness, as well as kindness, gives Primary Trust its wallop. The play never ignores pain, grief, or loneliness, but it offers a vision of what is possible when people choose compassion over judgment. “You hold your breath waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never does,” McFarlane says. “Instead, you get to be a witness to Kenneth getting met with gentleness and kindness. That, to me, is part of the magic of Primary Trust. And it’s why playing Kenneth feels so meaningful and important.”
Primary Trust runs through June 21, 2026 in the Guloien Theatre at Crow’s Theatre. Tickets and additional information are available at crowstheatre.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
