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The National
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
REVIEW: Martin Luther King drama hits the heights, and a technical low
King calls room service and requests a coffee. A young maid by the name of Camae arrives with his beverage. So begins American dramatist Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning 2009 play The Mountaintop. If you are – as I am in writing reviews – averse to spoilers, Hall's drama is a tricky proposition. It is necessary, yet possibly saying too much, to reveal that the fictional figure of Camae is not what she seems. The maid is Black, working class, clever, fast talking, flirtatious, irreverent, yet very much in respectful awe of King. As such, this multifaceted character is a brilliant foil to Hall's imagined MLK. King himself emerges – in Hall's characterisation – as a complex combination of traits inspired by both his public persona and what we know of his private biography. Inevitably – given the ever-present threats against his life – he is afraid for his person. His conversation with Camae explores the tussle between fear, on the one side, and determination, faith and a sense of purpose, on the other. Camae's respect for King does not prevent her from invoking Black radicals such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, and from airing opinions on the struggle for racial justice that are at odds with MLK's insistence on non-violent resistance. READ MORE: 'Joy, celebration and warmth' of Palestinian art to be showcased at Edinburgh Fringe In one particularly memorable scene, she even imagines a new, radically Black nationalist rhetoric for King. Yet the dialogue between the pair is so deftly wrought, so believable in its humour, affection and growing familiarity that its political dimension never comes close to polemic. The characters' interactions reflect to a considerable degree MLK's well-established 'weakness' where his extra-marital relations with women were concerned. In this, and in other – by turns delightful and anguished – aspects, the play's broad humanism is inflected with feminism. Caleb Roberts (MLK) and Shannon Hayes (Camae) create a powerful and transfixing theatrical duet as they perform on set designer Hyemi Shin's impressive set (a vertiginous rendering of King's motel room). Caleb Roberts Although contrasting in so many ways, the actors generate characters who are in equal measure charismatic and vulnerable, all the better for Camae to guide King through a dark night of the soul and up to the titular mountaintop. Indeed, so spellbinding are the actors that one cannot help but feel disappointed by the needless distraction – in what should have been a shuddering denouement – of very visible stagehands invading the stage in the crucial final scene. This misjudgement on the part of acclaimed director Rikki Henry seriously undermines an otherwise sure-footed staging. The director exhibits a misplaced loyalty to a visual metaphor for which he and his team have been unable to find a satisfactory technical solution. Which is a great shame as, otherwise, this production does excellent justice to Hall's celebrated drama. Until June 21:
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'This play is a sensation' - Review: The Mountaintop, Lyceum
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Five stars The heavens sound like they're splitting in two at the opening of Katori Hall's Olivier award winning play, which imagines Martin Luther King's last night on earth in fantastical fashion. It is April 1968, and Dr King is checking into his regular room in the Memphis hotel room where he'll meet his maker having just given the speech of his life. As he pretty much crawls through the door exhausted and clearly in pain, all he wants is to have some rest and a cup of coffee from room service. When a precocious maid called Camae delivers Dr King's beverage on what she says is her first day, what appears to be an after hours flirtation takes a startling turn to the celestial as Camae reveals she knows things about King that only his closest intimates are aware of. By the end, King's status as a reluctant prophet is guaranteed. Rikki Henry's revival of Hall's 2009 play is a sensation. Taking an already remarkable script, Henry and his team throw in a box of tricks that make for a thrilling experience. This is the case for Hyemi Shin's seismic set as it is for Pippa Murphy's soundscape that moves from storm battered rumblings to chapel house organ permeating Benny Goodman's low level mood lighting. Read more At the show's heart are two remarkable performances. Caleb Roberts as King presents a powerhouse study of a man much more vulnerable than his public persona suggests, while Shannon Hayes as Camae moves from sassy maid to something that defines both parties' futures. Onstage throughout more than ninety minutes without an interval, the interplay between Roberts and Hayes never lets up in an increasingly wild encounter that builds into an ever more relentless scenario. As King steps out to face his destiny, a barrage of video images accompanies a litany of things to come in a big play with big ideas that shows how history shapes the future in one of the most devastating works you're likely to witness.
