Photo: Marci Lucht as Evelyn Berry / Ellie Malynn via Park Square Theater
True crime, murder mysteries, and whodunits are well-worn territory, and the new play Red Herring fits nicely within that tradition as a taut crime thriller. In just 50 minutes, Pedro Juan Fonseca introduces a simple mystery starring a knot of complex characters, each carrying heavy emotional baggage. But the play also has deep compassion for those of us who get distracted by the trails we choose to follow in life. My favorite line in the play is spoken by the murderer: “If the truth is too ugly, people will always find what they want to believe instead.” Red Herring reminds us that mystery is not just a genre device, but the heart of the human condition.
Opening the inaugural Park Square LAB with this gripping play—followed by the class comedy Say When... from Mark Benzel, Matt Spring and the ensemble Simple Machines—is a daring way to reenergize the arts scene in downtown Saint Paul. The series gives Minnesota theater artists something rare: room to take real creative risks without rental fees, and Red Herring shows the kind of stories that become possible when institutions join forces with independent artists to keep the arts alive.
This play is chapter one in a psychological crime series that follows insurance investigator Evelyn Berry (Marci Lucht), unraveling a twisted case in Northern Minnesota after a body is found in the woods with one arm missing. As she digs through the evidence with lawyer Graham Given (Adam Moxness), they clash with incompetent cop Theo Roper (Thomas Matthes), before the play narrows into a contentious interrogation of the victim’s mother, Millie Olson (Carolyn Pool), who is hellbent on getting her payout.
Alex Galick expertly directs this taut, focused, and enthralling play, marking a repeat collaboration with Fonseca after the success of Pinned: A Solo Play About Your High School Bully, produced by Running Errands in 2025. By staging the characters in a semicircle of chairs in front of an eerie winter landscape, Galick makes the conflict palpable, mining tension between the characters as they leap from their seats, bump heads, and blow past each other like Duluth’s frigid winds. Peter Morrow’s minimalist sound design creates an atmosphere that is somber and intense, lending a cold shiver to the harsh nature of the story.
Photo: (from left) Carolyn Pool, Adam Moxness, Marci Lucht, and Thomas Matthes / Ellie Malynn via Park Square Theater
Pedro Juan Fonseca’s script is excellent. His writing makes the play feel vivid, unsettling, and remarkably memorable for such a compact piece. It gets inside your head in the most effective way, shifting easily from humor to depth without losing focus. He threads the characters’ pasts through their present using sharp, skillfully rendered monologues to create connection while keeping the story jolting forward with big reveals. Fonseca’s characters are not the usual mystery archetypes, but fully dimensional people, and the cast renders them into terrific performances.
Marci Lucht commands the stage with both elegance and severity. With her feet planted in classical theater playing roles like Natasha in Three Sisters, Meg in Little Women, and turns as Shakespearean heavyweights Beatrice and Lady Macbeth, Lucht proves a confident actor in the shoes of a modern woman. She plays Evelyn Berry as hardened by the world yet haunted by her past, while still letting us glimpse the damage she must choose to live with by the end of the play.
Photo: Adam Moxness as Graham Given / Ellie Malynn via Park Square Theater
Adam Moxness is a revelation in his dramatic debut on Twin Cities stages. Most recently seen in the 2025 Guthrie Actors Lab showcase, he comes from a musical theater background, with credits like Jimmy Ray Dobbs in Bright Star, Lt. Joseph Cable in South Pacific, and Bert in Mary Poppins, which makes his work here feel all the more unexpected. As the shrewd but sweet Graham Given, Moxness brings a polished precision to the first half of Red Herring that makes his unraveling in the second half hit even harder. Moxness plays Graham’s collapse with a force and vulnerability that will knock you out of your winter boots.
Supporting the leads is Thomas Matthes as the creepy and corrupt cop Theo Roper. This may be a return to the stage for Matthes—who also makes his debut at Park Square—but he’s got plenty of edge. Matthes is provocative, confrontational, and slimy in a way that’s fun to hate and a sick thrill to witness as he antagonizes everyone around him.
Photo: Carolyn Pool and Thomas Matthes / Ellie Malynn via Park Square Theater
But the standout turn belongs to Carolyn Pool as the Machiavellian Millie Olson. This is another surprising bit of casting from Fonseca and Galick, who clearly enjoy pushing actors into riskier territory. Pool is best known to Twin Cities audiences as one half of the Ivey Award-winning comedy duo behind 2 Sugars, Room for Cream and Sometimes There’s Wine. She leaves the laughs behind here for a juicy role as a villainous grieving mother, and she plays her like a bottle of stress about to shatter. Pool is menacing in her physicality and riveting in her monologues, painting a chilling picture of how grief can harden the heart.
Red Herring is a compelling crime case, but it also runs much deeper than that. It’s an adept examination of trauma and a reflective character study that stirs up real emotions. The play travels through some very dark territory, but it never loses sight of the human need to make peace with what hurts us.
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