Jordan Matthew Brown, Caroline Festa and More to Star in ZACK at Mint Theater
The cast will also feature Grace Guichard, Đavid Lee Huỳnh, David Patterson, Douglas Rees, and more.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jan. 23, 2026
Mint Theater Company has revealed the complete cast of Zack, led by Jordan Matthew Brown (Book of Mormon) in the title role of Zack by Harold Brighouse (Hobson’s Choice). Britt Berke (Becomes a Woman) returns to the Mint to direct.
Joining Mr. Brown will be Caroline Festa, Grace Guichard, Đavid Lee Huỳnh, David Patterson, Douglas Rees, Sean Runnette, Joy Avigail Sudduth, and Cassia Thompson.
The creative team will include Brittany Vasta (scenic design), Kindall Almond (costume design), Mary Louise Geiger (lighting design), Jane Shaw (sound design), Chris Fields (prop design), and Stephanie Klapper (casting director).
This Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row will begin February 21st for a limited run through March 28th. Opening Night is set for Sunday March 8th.
Written in 1916, Harold Brighouse's comedy Zack had the misfortune of appearing after Hobson's Choice, the one play that Brighouse is remembered for today — largely thanks to the 1953 movie starring Charles Laughton and directed by David Lean. Or maybe it's simply the title? The expression "Hobson's choice," meaning no choice at all, entered the vernacular around 1630, referring to Thomas Hobson's policy of requiring customers to take the horse nearest the stable door. "If it weren't for the close similarities, Zack might still be as familiar — not surprisingly, it is as rich, warm, funny, slight, and thoroughly enjoyable as the earlier work," wrote The Guardian in 1969, reviewing a rare production at the University of Manchester, the first in almost 50 years in the U.K.
Zachariah Munning has a natural sweetness that is unappreciated by his family. They long ago decided he was just lazy and dim. Zack’s calculating mother and cold-blooded brother are scheming to take advantage of a rich relative who is coming to visit. They believe her wealth might solve the problem of their failing business and are ready to sacrifice Zack for their own aims. Spoiler alert, Zack comes out on top.
Zack was produced again in Manchester in 1976 for the newly reopened Royal Exchange Theatre. Eric Thompson, father of actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson, directed, and the cast included Patricia Routledge as Mrs. Munning, Trevor Peacock as Zack, and Lindsay Duncan as the maid. One critic called the play "a product of shrewd observation, spiced by warm imagination."
Today, New York theatergoers might know Harold Brighouse as the author of Garside's Career, produced by Mint Theater a year ago, when it received a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Revival. Curiously, all three plays premiered in the U.S., not England, which was at war. B. Iden Payne, who had previously been at Annie Horniman’s Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, was working in the States and he welcomed the opportunity to premiere Brighouse's work.
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