M: Refractions from an Evil Act

Play (2026)
by James Wilkinson
World Premiere
Directed by Joe Juknievich
Exiled Theatre
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
New Plays Incubator Program
Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
July 31 – August 9, 2026

With Julia Hertzberg (M), Sydney Grant (Jolene), Tim Hoover (Lone) and Peter Tone (Hotel Clerk)

A man, Lone (Tim Hoover), is collapsed on the floor of a hotel room, stands up and stumbles around, calls out “M” and then disappears. A woman, who turns out to be M (Julia Hertzberg), a grumpy American visitor in a Paris hotel, comes into the room shortly afterwards, then calls in the hotel staff because she has noticed some disarray and wants help identifying who might have been there. A maid, Jolene, appears and a long dialogue in French and English takes place in which Jolene tries to respond in French, without much success, to M’s frustrated questions.

Eventually, the hotel Clerk (Peter Tone) appears, also speaking French, and engaging in long and relatively fruitless dialogue with M. During the course of these various interchanges, we learn that M is a serious alcoholic, but finds a way to have her desires for alcohol filled by both Jolene and the Clerk. Things begin to seem kooky, with the room door opening at odd intervals, with a stream of blood running down the wall, and with the eventual appearance of Lone who goes in and out of the bathroom and seems daunted by all of the goings on. As well, the Clerk and Jolene, who turn out to be siblings, evidence a certain amount of violent and unpredictable behavior at various points. Eventually, after lots of conversation and expressions of frustration by M, the lights shine on the audience, M screams, and the curtain falls.

Many mysteries and thrillers thrive on the edge of understanding, with the sense of something bizarre at work, but with the expectation that whatever it is may eventually be explained. In the case of this play, there is a more existential and fundamentally unanswered question at work, and one never really knows either what the mystery is nor what the possible answers might be. The narrative reminds one of the detailed but endless narrative Alain Robbe-Grillet uses in his fiction, sometimes dubbed by the honorific the new novel. It’s a deliberately observational but wandering approach, attempting some considerable attention to detail, with the lurking sense of something in the background, though one is never sure what that is.

At least half of this play is in French, a true credit to the two actors – Sydney Grant as Jolene and Peter Tone as the Clerk – who speak it beautifully and give a vivid sense of their characters. But this is an odd choice for a play that is intended for an English-speaking audience. A bit of French would make sense, but here it is pervasive. If the attempt is to convey the sense of alienation and incomprehensibility, the technique works. There are, indeed, very long dialogues which go on in this way, and one must be quite patient to get through them.

It does turn out, as things go along, that Jolene and the Clerk speak much better English than appears so at the outset, but why this happens and what it has to do with anything in the narrative is left up to the viewer’s imagination. Much of this play suggests a bad dream, and the final moment in which the lights come up and M sees, with horror, the audience, suggests that likeness to a dream. But what this dream might be about, other than the tracking of a fearsome encounter in a foreign city, never becomes clear.

Quite compelling are the performances of Sydney Grant’s Jolene and Peter Tone’s Clerk, not only for their continual and very fluid French, but also for their wonderfully contained and prissy demeanors that are occasionally broken by freakout moments. Julia Hertzberg’s M is that of a singularly irritated tourist; other than that irritation and alcoholism, it’s not clear what the character is about. Tim Hoover’s Lone seems appropriately daunted and victimized, but we’re never sure why he’s there.

Overall: A mystery in which the main mystery is what the mystery might be.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)