“I’m just a man, just a man,” says a trembling Martin Luther King Jr. in Katori Hall’s award-winning play, “The Mountaintop.” It’s a
powerful piece of historical fiction, playing through April 26 at Geva Theatre’s Wilson Mainstage.
Martin
Luther King Jr. (Royce Johnson) returns to room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis after reciting his momentous speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
The Geva production opens with a stirring excerpt,
but as King hits the stage, a contrast occurs and the audience must divorce
legend from man. “Get me a pack of Pall Malls,” King yells.
King shakes
the rain off his weathered clothes as he settles into his room. He is fervent
and continues to work, but exhausted. He coughs a smoker’s hack and orders
coffee, pacing and waiting with holes in his socks — paranoid, as he checks his
room for bugging devices.
Camae (Joniece Abbott-Pratt), a
spirited, young, and foul-mouthed motel maid, delivers his coffee and King
coaxes her to stay. The two move around each other like a subtle dance. What
begins as serendipitous flirtation develops into something more: a fateful
rendezvous. Camae and King challenge each other’s
beliefs — exploring culture, religion, and legacy. It’s April 3, 1968: King’s
last night on earth.
Forty-seven years to the day of MLK’s
assassination, which occurred on April 4, 1968, Geva
opened “The Mountaintop,” Rochester’s debut of Katori
Hall’s landmark play. It premiered in London in 2009, and quickly became a hit,
eventually winning Best New Play at the Laurence Olivier Awards. The work has
been produced globally, including a run on Broadway in 2011 with Samuel L.
Jackson and Angela Bassett in the lead roles.
Now, Royce
Johnson takes his turn as the man behind the legend. Johnson is a veteran of
the stage and small screen, appearing in many Off-Broadway productions (“A
Soldier’s Play,” “The Brother/Sister Plays”), and TV credits that include “Law
& Order: SVU,” “The Blacklist,” and the upcoming “Marvel’s Daredevil”
(Netflix).
His
portrayal of King is complex and a treat to watch: grandiose but flawed.
There’s a familiar stance, a recognizable head tilt. The MLK we know from
videos and speeches comes alive, but it’s merged with something unfamiliar:
King as a terrified human, sometimes harsh and rude, who in the quiet moments
cannot shake the fear.
Joniece Abbott-Pratt has performed all across the country
and brings fresh energy to Camae. There is
sensuousness to her portrayal. She is both simple and elegant — a joy to watch.
Johnson and
Abbott-Pratt have a chemistry that gives the production a comfortable pace. It
never feels drawn out, even without an intermission. When “The Mountaintop”
ends, you feel cheated out of a few extra moments with this couple.
Both
characters do suffer, slightly, from a script that isn’t quite certain what it
wants to accomplish. And the production does a lot of work to remove the legend
from the man, only to, by the end, (which, admittedly, is breathtaking)
reinforce King as a legendary — almost mythic — man.
Camae’s character reflects a couple of weak points in the
script, too. After her third foul-mouthed rant, her dialogue feels less natural
and authentic and more like an obvious tool, or dependable crutch to break the
tension with an easy joke: cussing in front of a reverend.
Otherwise, “The Mountaintop” excels
on almost every level. Robert Koharchik’s set design
is gorgeous and impressive: a big, beautiful highway sign hangs above the set,
like a moon, with a double-queen motel room below, a balcony wrapping around
it.
Given King’s
imminent assassination, it’s hard to ever feel comfortable watching this room,
and that’s the point. The bullet is due the next day, and we can feel the doom
settling over every joke, laugh, and cough.
Despite the
production’s (although emotionally effective) heavy-handedness, director Skip
Greer’s “The Mountaintop” is captivating and inspiring. It’s a must-see
production that will make you stand up and cheer. It serves as a reminder that
our heroes were once also human, and it ends with a call: maybe we, too, could
be heroes. That was King’s vision: the one he saw from the mountaintop.
Sitting in
the audience, it is impossible not to feel the call.
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2015.
