The Mountaintop review: The Geffen production is less victory lap, more urgent warning
In The Mountaintop, playwright Katori Hall (P-Valley) wants audiences to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a man, not a saint or a martyr.
When Hall was first seeking a home for the play, that notion was so volatile that she struggled to find a theater for it in the United States. It only came to Broadway in 2011 following an award-winning run in London. Over 10 years later, the play is receiving a new production at Los Angeles' Geffen Playhouse, currently playing through July 9 — and now, with a decade behind us marked by political upheaval, the rise of extremism, and more attempts to chip away at civil rights, it pulses with a new sense of urgency.
The Mountaintop — a title which references MLK's famous speech given in Memphis the day before he was assassinated — follows Martin Luther King Jr. (Jon Michael Hill) on the last night of his life, alone in a room at the Lorraine Motel. Until a maid, Carrie Mae (Amanda Warren), interrupts his solitude, upending his room and his very sense of self.
Over the course of a single night, Carrie Mae challenges Martin's sense of mortality and morality, seizing upon the ordinary things that make him simply a man — holes in his socks, stinky feet, his vanity, and his infidelity to his wife. They engage in a dialogue about civil rights that forces them both to expound on the movement, Martin's work, and the merits of peaceful protest versus violent action. Martin must confront his own weaknesses before ultimately reckoning with a vision of the future and the notion of passing the baton to whoever will pick it up next in the fight for justice and civil rights.
For those who have only chosen to see Dr. King as a saint and extraordinary man, The Mountaintop may present an uncomfortable exercise. But it's a deeply moving, provocative play, marked with magical realism. It confronts the notion of legacy and the perils of placing any one person on a pedestal.
Hill and Warren give tour-de-force performances in a 90-minute, no intermission, two-hander that finds them barreling through a morass of biographical information, ideological debate, and physical gymnastics (most notably in a pillow fight). It looks remarkably exhausting, not even accounting for the emotional toll of the material.
Hill bestows Dr. King with a self-serious sense of his own importance that is slowly stripped away by Carrie Mae's questioning and revelations. Warren crackles with irreverence and an inner fire from the moment she steps on stage. She's as unpredictable as a live wire, selling the play's central twist with a performance that is sheer sleight of hand.
Much credit must be given to director Patricia McGregor, who has given her actors the wings to soar by grounding them with such specificity. Her efforts are amply aided by the work of set designer Rachel Myers, who transforms a plain 1960s motel room into a space of supernatural possibility. The motel room exists within a glowing box, reminiscent of the modernism of the sets for Marianne Elliott's revivals of Company and Angels in America. As symbolized by this box, The Mountaintop is about illumination — for Martin, for Carrie Mae, and for all of us watching — but it's a detail that's easy to miss or misinterpret when the action begins. The set's genius and wizardry only reveal themselves as the true nature of Carrie Mae's mission does, and we won't spoil the effect here except to say it is some pure stage magic.
The Mountaintop reckons with legacy, with martyrdom, and with how far we've come and how far we still have to go. One can imagine that when it premiered in 2011 in the midst of Barack Obama's two terms as president that the final monologue about passing the baton might have played like a victory lap. Now, it's a call to action — a reminder that people are going to keep dropping that baton. But our job is to never forget to pick it back up. Grade: B+
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