Durae McFarlane puts his trust in a heartwarming new play at Crow’s
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Primary Trust, the up-and-coming actor plays a man who is forced to move on after suffering several losses
Note: So Sumi is giving away a pair of tickets to Crow’s Theatre’s production of Primary Trust, which runs until June 21 at the Guloien Theatre (345 Carlaw). See details at the end of this post.
One of the most unforgettable theatre debuts in recent years came in the fall of 2019, when Durae McFarlane — then a recent theatre school graduate — played a young, gangly, socially awkward movie usher in Outside the March’s immersive, intimate production of Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick at Crow’s Theatre.
The play went on to get rave reviews and enjoyed a sold-out run, making several critics’ best-of lists and winning awards. McFarlane’s nerdy, voice-quavering performance as Avery got singled out, earning him a Dora nomination. (He also made my list of 2019’s breakthrough stage artists.)
“I was in my fourth year at Windsor when I got that play,” explains McFarlane on a Zoom call.
“I hadn’t heard of Outside the March and I didn’t know who (director) Mitchell Cushman was — all of which was probably good, because there wasn’t as much pressure. I just went in to audition for a professional play, which was cool in itself.”
The play should have been the Mississauga-born McFarlane’s big breakthrough role — and in a way it was. Its success landed him an agent and eventually got him some lucrative TV and film work. But the pandemic put a hold on the entire stage industry. And while the actor took to writing during that time, and later joined the Soulpepper Academy for six months, he didn’t win the kinds of roles that could properly showcase his unique talent.
Until now, that is.
Beginning this week, in the same theatre in which he swept up popcorn in The Flick, he’s starring in Primary Trust. He plays Kenneth, a 30-something man who lives a calm, steady, uneventful life in the fictional suburb of Rochester, N.Y. His routine consists of working at a bookstore, then drinking happy hour mai tais with his best friend Bert (Peter N. Bailey) at a local tiki restaurant called Wally’s.
All of this is upended when he loses his job at the bookstore. After a waiter at Wally’s gives him a tip about a position at the local bank, called Primary Trust, he looks into it. And gradually, by opening up to the generosity around him, he comes to terms with his difficult past and makes the first tentative steps towards moving on.