[Theatre Review] RED HERRING Is a Cold, Clever Jolt of Minnesota Noir

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.

My Top 10 Films of 2025

Here they are, My Top 10 Films of 2025:

10. The Life of Chuck (dir. Mike Flanagan)

Where is your place in the grand scheme of things? What multitudes do you contain? This sweet, sad, and moving Stephen King adaptation confronts these lofty themes with unabashed sincerity.

9. Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein isn’t just alive; it has a soul.

8. Weapons (dir. Zach Cregger) 

In Weapons, not everything comes to the surface. And we don’t get every question answered. But that might be the scariest thing of all.

7. The Mastermind (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

Kelly Reichardt’s funniest film. A subversively quiet and radically minimal take on the heist genre.

6. The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Wagner Moura is a revelation in this vivid, vibrant, and distinctively rendered political thriller.

5. Misericordia (dir. Alain Guiraudie)

A fruitful and peculiar suspense tale that expounds upon human nature while wrestling with the meaning of life itself.

4. Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Part blockbuster with the blues, part pulpy vampire flick, and part shoot-em up showdown, this genre remix emphatically stomps to its own beat.

3. The Phoenician Scheme (dir. Wes Anderson)

An industrialist-themed yarn that blitzes with style and rattles with hilarity. Here, we bear witness to an artist working at the height of their craft. It’s truly splendid cinema. 

2. Marty Supreme (dir. Josh Safdie)

Immediately striking is this film’s lived-in atmosphere and Safdie’s portrayal of New York’s underbelly. It feels illegal. It feels like it’s out of code. You can practically taste the toxicity.

1. One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

From its opening minutes, this thing ignites with the fury of a Molotov cocktail and maintains its propulsive energy and fist-raising power for the entire 162-minute duration. What makes the film feel so classic and so masterful is the fact that, no matter the decade of its release, it would still be relevant.

[Film Review] The Mastermind

Is there such a thing as a subtle heist thriller? Well, there is now. Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, The Mastermind, is a subversively quiet and radically minimal take on the genre. In a way, it's an anti-Oceans 11.

It’s set in America during the 1970s, with the Vietnam War permeating through television sets and radios and protests in the streets. The plot revolves around J.B. (played by Josh O’Connor), a family man “between jobs” -- or, probably more accurately in his case -- just unemployed. To make up for a lack of income, he concocts petty plans to steal artifacts and paintings from a local museum. The problem? He’s not one to think things all the way through. 

This might just be Kelly Reichardt's funniest film. It's full of irony, and there's even a sprinkle of well-wrought slapstick here. And in addition to the wry dialogue, a lot of the comedy comes from just how much of an objective loser and bumbling moron the main character is. He can’t really do anything right, and he’s really frustrating at times. It’s to the point where he isn’t even that sympathetic, but this doesn’t make the film any less amusing. J.B. isn’t quite evil, nor is he unlikable enough to completely write him off. Much of this is owed to Josh O’Connor’s terrific performance. He possesses a charming naivety here, and he’s great at going into contemplative mode. He makes it all look so easy.

As expected with Kelly Reichardt, the film moves at a slower pace and thrives on small but keen moments. It’s also steeped in vintage period detail - even down to the slightly grainy and sepia tone look of the picture. The proceedings are backed by a freestyle jazz score that serves as a nice touch to the hushed chaos. 

While The Mastermind drifts along, it becomes clear that the film’s title is tongue-in-cheek. It has a Raymond Carver spirit to it. This is a transient story about someone losing their way, little by little. Someone who seems to be detached from the outside world. And someone who seems like they couldn’t change even if they tried. There’s no backup plan for J.B., but we still want to see where he goes. 

* 8.5/10 *

[Film Review] Marty Supreme

After dropping two modern classics of stressful cinema with his brother, Benny Safdie, in Good Time and Uncut Gems, Josh Safdie goes the solo route for Marty Supreme. I’m happy to say that he brings the energy to match here. This thing is gritty, brash, audacious, and compulsively addictive, and it features a fully-game leading performance from Timothée Chalamet. 

Set in New York City during the 1950s, the plot revolves around Marty Mauser (Chalamet). He has one mission: To be the best table tennis player in the world. The problem? He’s a screw-up in pretty much every area of his personal life. To go any further into plot details would be divulging too much, but it’s safe to say that Marty’s path to greatness is filled with more than a few hiccups.

Immediately striking is this film’s lived-in atmosphere and Safdie’s portrayal of New York’s underbelly. It feels illegal. It feels like it’s out of code. You can practically taste the asbestos. Josh Safdie populates this world with a roster of seedy characters who are mostly just out for themselves. Despite taking place in the 50s, the film boasts an 80s-themed soundtrack and score. This clash of eras works well for a film that incessantly thrives on chaos and combativeness. 

The screenplay is messy in the best way. As expected, characters frequently shout over each other while tempers erupt. The narrative is a zippy whirlwind of mishap after mishap. Hustle after hustle. Scam after scam. Disaster after disaster. Nothing ever comes easy. And nothing is ever exactly what it seems. There’s always something that goes wrong. There’s always something in the way, and most of it is self-inflicted. Like Adam Sandler’s character in Uncut Gems, Marty isn’t just running from his past; he’s running from stuff that happened two minutes ago. Here, Safdie flips what might initially seem predictable into the unpredictable, which keeps the thrills at an elite level. 

Timothée Chalamet is terrific in a tour de force turn, approaching the role with the same focus and tenacity that Marty brings every time he enters a table tennis match. It’s a performance that feels fittingly competitive and relentlessly dedicated. He impressively embodies the character in a way that’s reminiscent of how Robert Pattinson disappeared into his role during Good Time. Chalamet is also surrounded by a stellar group of supporting players. In a more conventional move, Gwyneth Paltrow is cast as a former movie star, and she plays the part well. Odessa A’zion, who was great in season one of HBO’s “I Love LA”, continues to shine as Marty’s risky flame. And then there are the curveballs. Hip-hop star Tyler the Creator is exuberant as Marty’s close friend, Knicks superfan Luke Manley proves to be a natural, and even “Shark Tank” personality and flashy businessman Kevin O’Leary gives a tremendous performance. Safdie has a knack for generating great performances from unlikely candidates, and he continues the tradition here. He also casts cult indie filmmaker Abel Ferrara in a significant role as a gangster of sorts. Ferrara's presence fits perfectly within this setting, and you can’t help but think of it as a winking homage, as Ferrara’s cinematic influence is scattered and painted all over this film. 

Marty Supreme is a film that leaves blood, sweat, and tears in its path, and I don’t just mean figuratively. The price of greatness? Well, it’s everything. 

* 9.5/10 *

[Film Review] Jay Kelly

Ah, the aging movie star. The price of fame. Public persona versus the real person. 

These are familiar themes in the world of Hollywood, and director Noah Baumbach shines a spotlight on them in his latest Netflix-released film, Jay Kelly. Here, he casts George Clooney in a leading role that seems specifically made for him and no one else. 

The plot revolves around the titular character (played by Clooney) as he faces a series of crossroads in his A-list career. Who does he want to be? Which direction is he being pulled in? Is he ready to abandon it all, or not? After having a nervous breakdown, he decides to take a trip to Europe in an attempt to repair his relationship with his daughter (Grace Edwards) and to attend a tribute ceremony. At his side are his publicist (Laura Dern) and his manager (Adam Sandler).

Fittingly, George Clooney gives one of the best performances of his career. He’s right in his wheelhouse, exercising his charisma with a blend of bittersweet emotion. He makes it look so easy, and often lets his magnetic screen presence speak for itself. It’s notably meta, to the point where the character of Jay Kelly and George Clooney almost blur together, and that certainly seems to be intentional. Also impressive is Adam Sandler in a formidable supporting role. While he’s mostly known for his comedy, it’s always fascinating to see how well Sandler truly thrives in more serious and dramatic parts such as this. 

Jay Kelly is a thoughtful character study that coasts on the strength of its stellar cast. Along the way, we’re treated to some nice scenery and cinematic glossiness. The picture proudly wears a sense of nostalgia on the sleeve of its well-ironed suit. Thematically, it’s largely about the power of memories and the weight of regret. And while the narrative doesn’t dive as deep as other Tinsel Town stories of a similar ilk (say, 1950’s Sunset Boulevard or even 2011’s The Artist), it’s hard not to be charmed by its offerings. 

All in all, Jay Kelly proves to be a perfectly pleasurable watch, even if it doesn't necessarily cover new territory. Everything in this film tends to fall into place in a neat and tidy way. But I guess that’s what we’d call a Hollywood ending.

( 7.5/10 )

This review also appears in print and online in St. Paul's Community Reporter newspaper.