Stephen Olson’s Letters of Merci, presented on Saturday, January 31st at The Unity Center of Norwalk, is an unflinching reflection on grief, accountability, and the possibility of redemption after unspeakable violence. In just forty minutes, Olson’s original work confronts an audience with a litany of brutal realities—murder, rape, necrophilia, human trafficking, addiction, racism, and child abuse—without softening its moral inquiry or offering easy catharsis. The result is a piece that is deliberately uncomfortable, demanding emotional endurance as much as intellectual engagement from performers and audience members alike.
Sparse lighting, a near-empty stage, and carefully placed props create a bleak moral landscape rather than a realistic one. A small cot at stage right, paired with Jack Dunlap’s (Joseph Bossé) tan T-shirt and khakis, establishes his incarceration without visual excess or added explanation. Opposite him, Merci’s father, Amsted (Joshua Eaddy), occupies a simple table and chair on stage left, grounded in stillness that contrasts with the psychological unrest consuming him. Center stage, Merci—played with quiet authority by Aimee Jean-Baptiste—remains a constant presence, an apparition suspended between worlds. Her placement becomes symbolic: she is the gravitational force pulling both men into confrontation with their guilt, rage, and unresolved grief.
Jean-Baptiste’s performance anchors the play. As Merci, she resists sentimentality, instead embodying a controlled supernatural urgency. She neither comforts nor condemns — she compels. Joshua Eaddy’s portrayal of Merci’s father is marked by restrained devastation, his grief unfolding through physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion rather than overt displays of feelings. Joseph Bossé frames Dunlap, not as a figure of sympathy, but as a man forced (almost unwillingly at times) into reckoning. His letters function as both confessions and reluctant self-examinations of the origins of his horrific behavior and choices. Olson’s choice to structure the play as a series of exchanged letters allows the language itself to become the primary action—each word excavating buried motives and moral fractures.
Olson, who also directed and produced the production, noted that Letters of Merci is loosely inspired by real events in Alabama, and this grounding lends the work a chilling plausibility. The supernatural framing does not absolve the characters of responsibility; instead, it intensifies the ethical stakes. The play opens with a haunting image—Merci’s father slumped in sleep, awakened by his daughter’s voice from beyond—setting the tone for a work that exists in the liminal space between memory and reckoning. Dunlap’s nightmares, which drive him to write his first letter as part of a drug treatment program, suggest that healing, if it comes at all, begins not with forgiveness but with the courage to confront one’s own monstrosity and its origins.
The post-show talk-back was a necessary extension of the performance rather than an accessory. Handled with care, it allowed actors to contextualize their preparation and emotional boundaries, offering the audience a means to process the weight of the material. Letters of Merci does not seek to console; it seeks to interrogate. In doing so, Olson delivers a work that forces the audience to reconcile an emerging empathy for Dunlap with an unrelenting horror at the crimes he has committed.
For more information about the show, please reach out the Stephen Olson directly at solsonii@msn.com.