Deity and mundanity combine on MLK Jr’s last night alive
One thundery night in April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr stayed at a motel in Memphis. In Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, he then discovers that by tomorrow, he will be dead.
What follows is a surreal and intense two-hander between King (played by Caleb Roberts) and Camae (played by Shannon Hayes) – who we discover is not merely the maid charged with bringing King his coffee and allowing him to flirt with her, but an angel, sent by God herself to prepare King for the end of his ministry. It mixes shades of Angels in America with Waiting for Godot, with an unapologetic exploration of issues within the Civil Rights movement, and King’s own private struggles. Katori Hall’s writing is sharp and as important today as it was in 2009, with Camae’s “if I were you preaching” speech ringing out boldly into the audience. Every time they speak each word is dripping with the weight of everything that has come before, and will come.
If the play does have a flaw, it lies in the transition between the mortal chatting between flawed hero and bright eyed young woman, and the surreal and holy conversations with an angel and indeed God. It lands a little clunkily, taking a while to find its rhythm and occasionally over-explaining to the audience what’s going on – mysticism is at its best when it doesn’t get bogged down by who had lunch with the original Martin Luther in Heaven’s canteen that day. However clunky the middle though, the finale was absolutely spell-binding theatre. King gives his final sermon, dragged off-stage by binding ropes before he truly finishes, with our angel reemerging with full wings to bring him home. The imagery is powerful and the performance from Roberts as King, a dying man begging to give his last words, was gut-wrenching to watch.
Roberts and Hayes are both incredibly engaging throughout the show, Hayes in particular relishing her humorous quips and her passionate speeches. Her push and pull between feeling impressed by King, sorry for him, and a little unnerved, further complicated by her revealing how she came to be charged with escorting King to the afterlife, stole the limelight even from such a great portrayal of the icon himself.
Hyemi Shin’s staging is a stand out in the production, becoming a third character that evolves with the story from a dingy motel room to a huge stone slab that turns King into a sacrificial lamb, stranded on his mountaintop as he sees visions of where his baton will be passed on to continue the fight. It’s delightfully tactile, with earth covering the front of the stage leading to dirty socks and a sense of staying grounded, even amongst the heavens. Composer and sound designer Pippa Murphy adds to this, combining the crashing thunder with eerie church organs punctuating King’s speech, never quite allowing the audience to settle but to ride the waves of fear and panic along with King.
The Mountaintop excels in these heightened moments of confronting mortality and deity, as much as its quiet humour shines in the mundanity of ordering coffee to your motel room, or calling your children to say good night. Hall’s play is a wonderful amalgamation of the two with plenty of room for discussion about what King’s legacy means to our world today.