Welcome back, Park Square!

A difficult and halting recovery from the pandemic’s economic aftereffects kept it dark since spring of 2023, but downtown St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre is aglow once again. After taking a year to get its financial house in order and establish its artistic focus – mostly new American plays from here on out – the company opened its 49th season this weekend.

And what an ideal production to relaunch it. As Park Square audience sizes ebbed and flowed this century, it could always rely on one annual staple to bring them in: A summer adaptation of a mystery story, often leaning upon two of the most popular franchises in that genre, the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and fellow Englander Agatha Christie.

Park Square’s enlisted both for “Holmes/Poirot,” playwright Jeffrey Hatcher and actor Steve Hendrickson collaborating to create a two-part mystery inspired by Christie’s “Murder on the Links.” In that novel, the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, ties a crime to an unsolved murder of two decades earlier. Hatcher and Hendrickson flesh out that flashback by turning it into a case for Victorian-era sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

It may sound like an odd fit, but the playwriting tandem has done an exquisite job of melding the styles of Conan Doyle and Christie, and Park Square’s production is expertly executed, each performer sculpting a pair of fascinating characters while spinning two very entertaining yarns on Erik Paulson’s labyrinthine set.

Having retired after 25 years as artistic director of Arizona Theatre Company – that state’s foremost regional theater – director David Ira Goldstein has returned to his old stomping grounds. Literally so, in that he was part of Actors Theatre of St. Paul when it forged the Seventh Place space out of the old Norstar cinema during the 1980s. For “Holmes/Poirot,” he’s assembled a crackerjack cast that’s clearly enjoying the opportunity to create such colorful characters, doing so with engaging energy and excellent timing.

Foremost among them are Hendrickson and Bob Davis. In the first act, Hendrickson dons the houndstooth cap of Holmes, while Davis embodies his sidekick, Dr. Watson, the two ably evoking the combination of affection and exasperation that can be found in long-term friendships. After intermission, Davis becomes Poirot, while Hendrickson takes on the role of somewhat befuddled wingman in Arthur Hastings. It’s a joy to observe the transformations.

But such is true of each of the nine actors. Park Square’s re-emergence is not the only welcome return, in that the wonderful Stacia Rice is back on a Twin Cities stage for the first time in several years, and she’s outstanding as an ingenue who might be a femme fatale in the Holmes mystery, then a mysterious neighbor in the Christie tale.

Norah Long is clearly having great fun as the whimsically named tracer of family trees, Fraulein Bundt, before becoming the distressed widow of act two. And what a treat to see David Andrew Macdonald – who played the scheming husband in the Guthrie’s January production of “Dial M for Murder” (another Hatcher adaptation) – as the suave and cynical murder victim in both stories.

Add the finely crafted lighting of Kurt Jung, Matthew J. LeFebvre’s of-the-eras costuming and the suitably mysterious music of Frederick Kennedy, and Park Square’s next chapter is off to a captivating start.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

“Holmes/Poirot”

When: Through Nov. 3

Where: Park Square Theatre, 20 W. Seventh Place, St. Paul

Tickets: $60-$25, available at 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org

Capsule: Park Square returns with an expertly executed mystery – or two.