RED HERRING By Michael Hollinger
directed by Patrick Martin
September  15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30

This screwball romantic comedy, noir mystery, and spy yarn rolled into one is a sharp-witted look at love and marriage, murder, McCarthyism, Cold War espionage, and some serious mistaken identity. The year is 1952 … America is honing in on the H-bomb, Ike is on the fast track to be President, I Love Lucy is on Monday nights, and Joe McCarthy is on the loose.
A dead guy has turned up on a Boston fishing pier and hard-boiled homicide detective, Maggie Pelletier, has to find out who left him there! Dial ‘M’ for Mayhem! It's all a perfect recipe for a Gordian knot-of-a-plot, as personal quests for Utopia interlace themselves with political ideologies, revenge, and greed! Then again, nothing is quite as it appears. In the midst of this merry-go-round, each of the characters, in his and her own fashion, is lurching breathlessly toward the altar. One of them remarks, in a moment of reflection, that love is like a leaky boat: it will always stay afloat as long as someone keeps bailing it out.

Red Herring, which premiered in 2000 in Philadelphia, is arguably the zaniest comedy penned by Hollinger, the creator of An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf (1994), Incorruptible (1996), and most recently, Opus (2006). His plays have been produced dozens of times in cities around the U.S. and in London, and continue to engage audiences all over.