First, a cranky PSA - We use a vehicle to get to these venues, and I recognize that the folk that live near the theater need their space as well, so I have no prob in paying to park in established lots. But the continual changes in paying for parking is starting to wear on me. Twice now in the past month I've shown up at a regular parking lot to see that the methodology has changed. I've adapted to the whole you-need-a-credit-card-to-park thing, but now you need to have an account with a particular app that you've never heard of before and must download right now if you want to park (and curtain is in 15 minutes). The end result for ArtsWest was that the usual convenient parking slots behind the theater (previously credit-card based, now app-ish) was almost empty last Friday except for a few other people trying to figure out the new method, while the side streets (usually used by the local folk) were packed with people seeking out street parking to avoid the lots. Good going, West Seattle - keep that small-community feel by discouraging outsiders from actually patronizing your restaurants and theaters while making it difficult for your actual denizens.
Sigh. Anyway,
Zach is a satirical comedy based on a 90s teenage sitcom. Being thirty-three in 1990, I didn't get the specific reference at first, but it tickled the back of my brain as the type of after-school sitcom found on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon in all their cringeworthy glory. Later checking on the Wikipedia pins it down to One Particular teenage sitcom, right down to analogist names and Character Archtypes within the high school ecosystem.
But without such knowledge, you still know what you're getting into, as the play segues between sitcom and realist portrayals. In the sitcom domain, we have the overplayed characters, the bouncy commercial bumpers complete with dance moves, and laugh tracks, but then things change and become darker as we move into a more realistic portrayal of the same universe. Here we're dealing with loss of loved ones, stress, class, race, and gender issues. We switch back and forth between the two universes easily, and for a while I was concerned with how dark it would ultimately go (the 90s were also noted for comedy sketches that would end with someone picking up a chainsaw).
Anyway, our primary protagonists are PJ (kinda dorky but athletic Hispanic kid) and Gina (African-american fashionista), who have been friends forever . Suddenly Zack (white, cis, privileged) arrives on the scene and makes them and their friends into a clique that suddenly clicks, as well as making them his minions for mean-spirited pranks that get other groups in school in trouble. In the sitcom universe, Zach is the merry, beloved prankster. In the real world he's an absolute scumbag that uses his privilege as his carte-blanche to get away with everything.
It is a play with two actors and over a dozen characters. Michael Nevarez is primarily PJ, and Amber Walker is primarily Gina. The other characters are split between them, with them switching off, playing each other's characters, sometimes passing a character from one actor to the other in a single scene. And they do it effortlessly and naturally, keeping the core of their characters solid so you know who they are (which is a problem I had with The Endless Shift). Both actors are fantastic, capturing both the high energy of the sitcom versions and the more nuanced nature of their real selves.
The set design is clean and evokes the era of the nineties, with its strong off-primary colors and lightning-bolt shades. St. Croix is owed this because his last play at the ArtsWest, Monsters of the American Cinema, was sabotaged by its own set design. Here it looks like the set of Zoom (which is a show of an era which I can remember).
Zach flirts with its darkness, but its ultimate resolution splits the difference between the worlds and resolves them both. Is it worth seeing? Definitely. Even if you have to deal with new, alien parking? Still Definitely. Good actors, good performances, good script. Well done.
More later,
