The Mountaintop
By Katori Hall
Presented by the Shaw Festival
In association with the Obsidian Theatre
July 16 — September 7, 2014

Katori Hall was born in 1981 and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. As a child her mother related stories of the Civil Rights Movement and of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in particular. She is a graduate of The Julliard School, with an MFA in playwrighting. Before she turned 30 The Mountaintop had been performed in London, England, and in several cities in the United States.

The Mountaintop is a one-act play set in Martin Luther King’s room at the Lorraine motel, in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was assassinated. He had just delivered the speech in support of the city’s sanitation workers, the speech where he famously and presciently spoke of the ‘mountaintop’, where he said he ‘might not get there with you’, but he is not afraid of ‘any man’, because ‘mine eyes have seen the glory of the promised land’.

The play starts with King offstage, outside his room, imploring his colleague, Ralph Abernathy, to get him cigarettes, ‘Pall Malls’, specifically.  King then enters the room, takes off his jacket and promptly disappears offstage. We hear the sound of him urinating, then a toilet flushing.

He reappears and calls downstairs for a cup of coffee.  Soon there is a knock on the door. It’s a hotel maid with his coffee on a tray.  The remainder of the play examines the interaction between King and the maid, Carmae.

This play is extremely engaging, and filled with interesting insights, especially when viewed through the rearview mirror of the early twenty-first century.  We are presented with King’s frustrations, including those with his own people:  why weren’t there more people attending his speech earlier that evening?  And don’t they know that ‘you can’t be marching down the street and then bust into store windows and then go get you a free color television’?

There’s also a debate with Camae over the usefulness of non-violent means to achieve social change, and the ‘any means necessary’ approach of Malcolm X.

The play moves along quickly, grabbing you from the very first scene to the last, utilizing crisp, often profane dialogue, and audio and visual effects that are extremely effective.

It’s just as much about Camae as it is about King himself, and it is Carmae’s character that undergoes the more radical transformation. At first she is a loyal admirer of King, and then she reveals her own revolutionary side—espousing violent retaliation against oppression.

At its core, I believe the play is Ms. Hall’s attempts to depict Dr. King as an ‘ordinary’ man, and his dialogue with the maid, ostensibly a poor black woman, is used to accomplish this.  But this is one of the challenges the playwright faces: what is ‘ordinary’’?  It’s entirely subjective, it must be. And so we have a King who is not only desperate for cigarettes,   but urinates off stage, and speaks like the maid throughout the play. For instance, at one point Camae says to King: ‘For what it worth. I know God like you. The real you.’ And King replies: ‘Do He really?’ He also uses the so called ‘n’ word on several occasions. When wondering aloud about one of his trusted friends with his cigarettes, he asks, ‘where is that niggah wit’ my pack?’

The  attempt by Ms. Hall to present King as an ordinary man, by teaming him up with the supposedly very ordinary Camae,  makes the play interesting, but for me, also controversial, and somewhat disappointing. And I’ve come to this conclusion, primarily, for two reasons.

First, the world-wide perception of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is of course that of one of the most venerated figures of the twentieth century, a legendary leader who delivered what is one of the most inspirational speeches in the history of the United States, if not the world:  the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech delivered at the March on Washington in 1963. He is also singularly associated with the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, the movement that was instrumental in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. These are pieces of legislation that sought to redress countless issues of injustice, and dehumanizing treatment that African-Americans suffered for centuries.  Undoubtedly he was not only a tower of inspiration for African-Americans, but for millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world. Certainly, together with Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, he is one of the true giants in the struggle of oppressed peoples of the twentieth century.

To portray an individual with such a stellar, global reputation, as an ordinary man is a gutsy move. The technique for portraying him this way though is the challenge. The challenge is even greater because he is presented as ordinary by early twenty-first century standards, as opposed to those of the mid-twentieth century.  I suggest that ‘ordinary’ today is a bit different from ordinary back then. A quick look at popular culture would suggest that we are probably more coarse, less civil, and more rude, than our forebears fifty years ago.  And so it’s hard for me to believe the Dr. King depicted in The Mountaintop. And this is especially so since King, the inspirational leader is nowhere to be found, except in recordings of his speeches piped through the theatre prior to the start of the play.  The narrative is driven by Camae, and King is primarily there as her audience. It’s hard to see what in Ms. Hall’s Martin Luther King could have made him such a stellar figure of the twentieth century.

The second reason why I found the play controversial and somewhat disappointing is also associated with the perception of ‘ordinariness’, this time from Camae’s perspective.  As the story develops we learn that Camae is not just a maid, but an angel –a foulmouthed one at that–sent to take Dr. King over to the ‘other side.’  Bringing in a supernatural element is a brilliant move. Through her, King obtains a glimpse into key incidents that will come to define the United States for the next forty years, including the election of its first Black president. It’s a brilliant plot device, but those who have strong religious beliefs will probably find the idea of a profanity spewing angel—and by extension, a profane heaven?–deeply distressing.  For many, the faith and the hope that God, heaven, angels provide, is diametrically opposed to the lives that we live today. So to suggest that angels are just like regular folk just cannot work.

The Mountaintop is brilliant in concept and ideas. The writing in is fantastic. The final scene is surreal, powerful and extremely uplifting. Ms. Hall is clearly an extremely talented playwright. However, for some, the play is a little too daring, takes too many chances. It may be a work that plays to twenty-first century norms, but it’s probably not a play for everyone.

This is a personal reflection on the play, The Mountaintop. I’m not a theatre critic or an expert on the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
Weldon Turner