DIRECTOR

THEATER REFRAMED

Harry Waters Jr. and a magnetic local cast turn Pedro Juan Fonseca’s second Evelyn Berry mystery into a theatrical event at Yellow Tree Theatre.

TAGS: the house always sins | betting is believing | false prophet | ’til debt do us part | blood money | that’s fraud, babe

by Zach Murphy, an author and film reviewer dropping hot takes on his Substack, FADE TO ZACH

After Red Herring thrilled audiences at Park Square Theatre in March, investigator Evelyn Berry returns for another twisty Minnesota murder mystery. The Prophet is chapter two in Evelyn Berry Investigates, a buzz-worthy psychological crime series of plays created by Pedro Juan Fonseca and developed with Alex Galick. I caught the play’s workshop reading at Yellow Tree Theatre’s Playwright Festival in Osseo. Now in its second year, the festival gives Twin Cities artists space to showcase work that’s in development. What I witnessed was a tense, absorbing story and an intimate look into the creative process.

The Prophet deals with the rapidly expanding world of online gambling, from sportsbooks to prediction markets. When high roller Deuteronomy “Ron” Hoyle (Kevin Brown Jr.) vanishes from the fictional Longview Resort & Casino in northern Minnesota, insurance investigator Evelyn Berry (Marci Lucht) and attorney Graham Given (Steve Mallers) must protect the gambler’s wife, Melody (Alessandria Rhines), from the violent bookies closing in. The story examines what happens when the fantasy of beating the odds collides with gambling’s oldest rule: The house always wins.

Much to my delight, the play was introduced by its director, local celebrity Harry Waters Jr. A professor emeritus in Macalester College’s Theater and Dance Department, Waters Jr. may be best known to Twin Cities audiences as Marvin Berry in Back to the Future, where his rendition of The Penguins’ doo-wop classic “Earth Angel” serenades the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. At Yellow Tree, he put that famous voice to work, delivering the stage directions with gusto alongside his cast.

Pedro Juan Fonseca’s new script is snappy and sophisticated. The dialogue is dynamic, balancing dark material with rousing humor that draws big laughs throughout the play. Fonseca's hyper-specific details immerse us in his world, from the casino’s colorful dinner specials to so-accurate-it-hurts descriptions of rural Minnesota highways. As in Red Herring, the twists in The Prophet do more than solve a puzzle. Piece by piece, Fonseca builds a magnetic ensemble of characters we can’t help but care about. It’d be a sin to spoil any of the twists, but what I can say is that The Prophet is a play that truly ups the ante.

This event was billed as a reading, but it felt like so much more. Director Waters Jr. gives the workshop a visual flair on par with a full production, blocking the action in front of wood-paneled doors crossed with crime-scene tape and shrouding the stage in hot pink shadows cut by gold floor lamps. The script was fleshed out, and the actors wore costumes and passed around props, even drinking (water!) from an impressive collection of wine and whiskey bottles surrounding a typewriter on a bar cart at the foot of the stage. Though they occasionally glanced at their scripts, the cast gave passionate performances that never let their music stands become barriers.

Fonseca and Galick’s instinct for spotlighting little-known Twin Cities talent pays off again with actor and musician Alessandria Rhines. As Melody, Rhines paints a vivid portrait of a party girl whose steely resolve ultimately saves her. The result is an unforgettable breakout performance. Alongside her, Kevin Brown Jr. is electric as the delusional Ron, delivering the gambler-turned-prophet’s monologues with such conviction that I almost forgot he plays a towering narcissist.

Steve Mallers joins the cast as Graham Given with effortless charm. Mallers is beautifully understated as Evelyn’s conscience and confidant, drawing us closer with every feeling Graham holds back. Leading the ensemble is Marci Lucht, who makes this play feel like a homecoming. Lucht reconnects us to the heartbreak she brought to life in Red Herring while centering The Prophet with her wary intelligence and flinty wit. Her fearlessly silly moves during a hilarious dance break are a refreshing reminder that an actor can commit fully without taking herself too seriously. Simply put, she is marvelous as Evelyn Berry, giving the mystery both its spine and its pulse.

Platforms like the Playwright Festival at Yellow Tree Theatre—and the Park Square LAB, where the series journey began—connect theatre lovers to can’t-miss hidden gems and are a testament to how much talent is blossoming across the Minnesota arts landscape.

I look forward to more stories like this getting their moment to shine, and I’m genuinely excited to see what Evelyn Berry investigates next.

Editing/Formatting: Pedro Juan Fonseca

THEATER REFRAMED

A sharp new thriller reveals the hurt beneath the whodunnit, and opens the Park Square LAB in style.

TAGS: murder, maybe | prestige peril | cold comfort | trust no mom | grief in evening wear | girl, run

by Zach Murphy, an author and film reviewer dropping hot takes on his Substack, FADE TO ZACH.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Editing/Formatting: Pedro Juan Fonseca