Jordan Matthew Brown plays the eponymous Zack, here with his family’s short-term maid Sally (Caroline Festa), in Harold Brighouse’s 1916 comedy, currently being revived by the Mint Theater.
Last fall the Mint Theater revived Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross (1935), a warning about encroaching fascism—sadly relevant once again. Its current production, Harold Brighouse’s Zack (1920), is less overtly political but offers its own quiet consolation: a romantic-comic parable in which everyday kindness and decency triumph over avarice and cruelty.
Zack’s older brother Paul Munning (David T. Patterson, left) wants to marry his cousin Virginia (Cassia Thompson) because her wealth could prop up the failing family business.
Zack, directed by Britt Berke, features many of the Mint hallmarks, such as being precisely detailed and finely acted, though it forgoes the regional accents one might expect in a Lancashire setting. The play itself is sometimes clumsy and creaky, but the production weathers these rough spots and captures its heartwarming core.
Brighouse was a prolific Northern English playwright who is best known for Hobson’s Choice (1915)—which had successful Broadway and West End runs and spawned multiple film adaptations, including one in 1954 with Charles Laughton. Now, though, Brighouse has fallen into the dreaded “neglected” category, which makes him ripe for the Mint, which staged another of his plays, Garside’s Career, in 2025. He was part of the so-called Manchester School of playwrights in the early 20th century, who challenged Victorian mores and depicted middle- and working-class characters rather than the aristocracy.
Zack is set entirely in the modest, blue-hued parlor of the Munning house (scenic design by Brittany Vasta), a rural family running a troubled wedding-catering business. The play opens with Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell) trying, mostly in vain, to instruct Sally (Carolina Festa) how to act like a full-time servant so that their soon-to-arrive houseguest, a young cousin named Virginia who needs a respite in the country, doesn’t realize the Munnings’ limited means.
Mrs. Munning’s eldest son, the prickly, financially obsessed, and humorless Paul (David T. Patterson), is vexed at the prospect of having to host someone, though Mrs. Munning has marriage in mind, not out of any regard for Virginia, but because of her money. Obliviously throwing a wrench in his mother’s plans is the titular Zack (Jordan Matthew Brown), an eccentric, sensitive, disheveled young man with a voracious appetite who is more at home in the pages of a book than in the world of business.
Cassia, here giving Zack the first shave of his life, sees the goodness in him that his family is blind to.
Mrs. Munning and Paul treat Zack with unrestrained hostility. He is repeatedly insulted as being lazy, clumsy, and useless; lest there be any ambiguity in how Mrs. Munning feels about her youngest son, she says, “I’m not particularly fond of Zack.” Ouch.
Virginia, a terrific Cassia Thompson in her Off-Broadway debut, sees through the family’s disparagement of Zack and understands his essential goodness. Zack’s decency can get him into trouble, though, such as in a romantic misunderstanding with Martha Wrigley (played by Grace Guichard with comic perfection), which is then exploited by her father, Joe (an excellent Sean Runnett), a worker who is mistreated by Mrs. Munning and Paul and is seeking revenge. Kindall Houston Almond’s period costumes help subtly establish the class differences at play.
But Zack’s goodness also uplifts others. The business has been described to Paul as not “hearty” enough, yet he fails to connect that missing quality with Zack’s absence. When Zack is allowed to be a waiter again at events, his good nature shines through, despite his clumsiness, and people once again want the Munnings’ catering. “He’s got a gift for jollifications,” as one client (Douglas Rees) tells Mrs. Munning.
Munning family employee Joe Wrigley (Sean Runnett, third from left) has plans of his own, involving his daughter Martha (Grace Guichard, second from left), as Paul and Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell) look on. Photographs by Todd Cerveris.
An essay by the Mint’s dramaturgical advisor, Jesse Marchese, describes Brighouse’s work as “incisive accounts of the uneasy relations between laborers and capital … as well as the human drive to carve out a happy and meaningful life in the face of great hardships.” With this framework in mind, it was difficult at first to locate the tone of Zack: it touches on the themes Marchese mentions, but with great lightness. It is, essentially, a play that uses fairy-tale logic, and once that is accepted, one need not worry about the one-dimensionally “evil” characters, the improbabilities, the brisk reversals of fortune, and the happily-ever-after ending.
Zack is an idiosyncratic Prince Charming, and Brown emphasizes his neurotic tentativeness. Ultimately it is Virginia who takes control and drives the play to its inevitable conclusion: she defies Mrs. Munning, breaks off her engagement to Paul—who had convinced her that Zack is no good—and arranges everything through the force of her will. In Thompson’s layered performance, it feels like Virginia’s quiet intelligence has been itching to break through, and it’s thrilling when it does.
Zack isn’t a great play, but this is a lovely production—and it’s a balm to indulge in a story in which kindness wins the day, even if it’s only wish fulfillment.
Zack runs through March 28 at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tickets are available by visiting minttheater.org.
Playwright: Harold Brighouse
Director: Britt Berke
Set Design: Brittany Vasta
Costume Design: Kindall Almond
Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger
Sound & Arrangements: Jane Shaw
