Theater Review: Zack

MINT THEATER COMPANY
March 15, 2026

By Eric Uhlfelder

I’ve been reviewing plays at the Mint Theater for more than a dozen years. A common thread running through most of its shows, which are exclusively focused on forgotten, rarely produced plays, is the unpredictability of human behavior and the conflict and pathos it evokes.

Mint productions are extremely well performed and directed, always attractively staged.

Zack continues this pattern.

This play, however, is both annoying and endearing, which is a take I’ve rarely had about a Mint show. Characters are mostly one-dimensional and the dialogue is not particularly memorable. This means that for those who frequently attend the Mint, one needs to adjust expectations to appreciate this understated production.

To help understand Zack, Jesse Marchese, the theater’s dramaturgical advisor, describes playwright’s Harold Brighouse enduring appeal. He observes this early 20^th-century British author offers, “incisive accounts of uneasy relations between laborers and capital, the precarious lure of fame and success, as well as the human drive to carve out a happy and meaningful life in the face of great hardships.”

The Mint’s 2025 production of Brighouse’s Garside’s Career was dynamic and compelling theater that delivered on that promise.

Zack, written in 1916, is a less ambitious production, more narrowly focused on a lovely country home in Lancashire England that houses a struggling wedding catering business run by a surly middle-aged widow Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell) and her equally surly 30-something son Paul (David T. Patterson).

For most of the play, we see struggling families, animus, and scheming characters that reveal the not so pleasant backside of a very public business that demands congeniality and hospitality. These are qualities of which mother and older son are in short supply, and especially evident in the manner in which they treat the younger son, Zack (Jordan Matthew Brown).

At first, their dismissiveness appears justifiable. A pleasant, good-natured but slow-witted Zack seems to have a sloth’s disposition, lacking ambition, interested only in simple pleasures, and wishing most of all not to be disturbed.

Director Britt Berke tells us she finds Zack endearing, exclaiming, “We’re all Zack.”

Really?

Well, I suppose things may not be what they first appear and that Brighouse will spin us in unexpected directions.

A disturbing theme that gets repeated is contempt for one’s own children.

We see it when a former employee of the Munnings seeks to pawn off his slow-witted daughter, Martha (Gracie Guichard), onto Zack, exploiting his kindness for having consoled and fed the young girl when she was hungry, punishing the Munnings for having sacked him after he broke his arm and couldn’t work.

Adorable as Martha appears, she’s as lost as Zack. It’s at that moment we learn that Zack’s not as clueless as we may first think. In pleading against this union, Zack observes: “Martha’s the helpless sort and I’m the helpless sort and you don’t make two soft people strong by wedding them together.”

Early on, a line that stuck is when Mrs. Munning makes plain her feelings towards her younger son: “I’m not particularly fond of Zack.” And both she and Paul are never short of nasty zingers sent his way. But we learn later that their modest catering business remains afloat in large part due to Zack.

A guest at one of Munning’s events observes that while, “Zack’s a bit of a fool at doing most things, he’s got a gift for jollifications . . . If the talk’s going flat, or anybody recalls a subject that’s not fit to be recalled at a wedding—an old quarrel or such likes—what does Zack do but break a plate? And smiles that smile of his, and all’s well in a moment.”

A visiting cousin, Virginia Cavender (Cassia Thompson who the playwright allows to shine above the rest of the cast and Thompson does so to great effect), senses Zack’s decency and warmth, and completes the revelation about Zack by deploying the shaving kit she had given him on his birthday—a date notable for no one else having remembered the young man’s 29^th birthday.

While stage shaving is not typical fare in theater, Brighouse makes good use of this physical stunt, with Virginia removing Zack’s ill-kempt beard to show us (and to Zack’s astonishment) who he really is . . . as if years of meek, oppressive living had contributed to a shy, nervous, reclusive character that was never permitted to blossom, until now.

And I suppose that’s what the director was alluding to when she said, “We’re all Zack.”

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“Zack” runs 1 hour and 45 minutes without intermission at the Mint Theater on Theater Row at 410 West 42^nd Street through March 29^th. minttheater.org