David Lee Huynh, Melissa Maxwell, Sean Runnett, Douglas Rees, David T Patterson (Photo: Todd Cerveris)
Zack
By Marc Miller
An unambitious, ordinary, middle-class young man has been hassled by those around him into considering himself a nonentity. Along comes a spirited, forward-thinking young woman who sees qualities in him that others don’t, and together they forge a romantic relationship that convinces him of his worth and thrusts them into a brighter future. That’s Hobson’s Choice, more or less, Harold Brighouse’s most famous play. And it’s also a fair summarizing of Brighouse’s Zack, written around the same time and now in rare revival by the Mint Theater Company.
Hobson’s is much the better play, and it’s no fun to report it, but this Zack also falls short of the Mint’s usual high production standard. It’s a quiet work, commenting gently on class distinction and the tortured courtship rites of the time, nominally a comedy but with relatively few smiley moments and fewer laugh-out-loud ones.
The whole thing takes place in the parlor of the Munning family, where Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell) is dusting, awaiting the arrival of Virginia (Cassia Thompson), who would rather be called Jenny. She’s a friendly, wealthy first cousin from a neighboring town, and Mrs. Munning would like to engineer a marriage between Jenny and her son Paul (David T. Patterson), the more polished and better-looking of her two boys. The Munnings have been hurting financially; Paul and his brother Zack (Jordan Matthew Brown) are “joiners” (some sort of carpenter; a program glossary might have helped), but with that business failing, they’ve ventured into catering. To keep up appearances for Jenny, they’ve enlisted a neighbor, Sally (Caroline Festa), to pose as their maid. Sally is surly, argumentative, and lazy, and more humor is supposed to spring out of that than actually does. Brighouse could have written her out altogether.
David T. Patterson, Cassia Thompson (Photo: Todd Cerveris)
Nobody thinks much of Zack, including Zack. “I can’t do right,” he offhandedly confesses to Jenny, and he accepts that, never acknowledging that his brother and mother browbeat him incessantly, consider him worthless, and don’t let him forget it. Jenny sees finer things in him; we don’t. But other townsfolk do, hiring the Munnings for catering gigs only because his presence at a party guarantees a good time. “Zack’s a bit of a fool at doing most things, but he’s got a gift for jollifications,” opines Harry (Douglas Rees), a townie elder who’s willing to throw more business the Munnings’ way if Zack is part of it.
Complications: The Munnings hired Joe Wrigley (Sean Runnett), a blustery local, to help with an upcoming wedding, but he broke his arm. His daughter Martha (Grace Guichard) begs them to pay him anyway, and when they refuse, further complications ensue, leading up to, get this, the engagement of Martha and Zack. It takes two of three intermission-less acts to sort things out and restore the Munning boys to their proper partners.
It’s 1915 Lancashire, but there’s little sense of time or place. Can’t anybody up there do an accent? Lines like “I just came in here for a bit of a sit-down” don’t reverberate as they should when delivered in flat Midwestern tones. Brittany Vasta’s unit set is functional and little else, and in what’s supposed to be a prim parlor, why are those tables and chairs stacked atop one another upstage right, and frequently being kicked over or moved about? Kindall Almond’s costumes include a frilly yellow-white number for Jenny whose skirt is too high for 1915, and Zack wanders around town in a brown suit probably too rumpled to pass muster on the streets of Little Hulton. Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting has a nice transitional moment or two, but mostly it’s just very bright.
David T Patterson, Caroline Festa, Cassia Thompson, Melissa Maxwell (Photo: Todd Cerveris)
I saw a preview; the cast will probably have stopped stepping on each other’s lines by the time you see it. The casting’s nontraditional, and no quarrels with that, but it does give one pause when Mrs. Munning remarks to Jenny, “You’re pale.” Thompson is a winning Jenny, though Brighouse doesn’t give her much to play until the second and third acts, while Maxwell’s Mrs. Munning is one long grimace, bustling about and barking orders with little variance. Brown’s an all-right Zack; maybe under better direction than Britt Berke’s, we’d sense the hidden qualities in the title character that Jenny (and Martha and Sally; they’re all after him, why?) sees in him. To succeed, Paul, a crafty manipulator, would have to have more charm than Patterson provides. Festa’s Sally grows tiresome, probably more Brighouse’s fault than hers, and as Martha, I don’t know what Guichard is playing. Some performances stand out: The proceedings get livelier every time Runnett’s loudmouth Joe Wrigley stomps in, and Rees exudes character and authority in the few minutes Harry is onstage.
Brighouse wants to comment on the social rigidities of the time (a program note helpfully ventures into how couples courted and married, and the scandal of broken engagements) and the withering effects of parceling out favoritism among siblings. But it all plays rather sitcommy, “I’ve bought their tickets”; “They’ll do to light a fire with” is about the height of hilarity here, and there’s not much suspense about who’s going to end up with whom, not to anyone who’s seen Hobson’s Choice.
No disrespect to the Mint, which has rediscovered many theatrical gems and burnished them to a fine gloss, and doubtless they’ll find and buff many more. There are good moments, and for all Brighouse’s dithering, it’s an old-fashioned well-made play. But compared to most of the Mint’s output, this Zack is a walk on the mild side.
Zack
At Theater Row
410 W. 42nd St.
Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes, no intermission
Through March 28, 2026
