THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall, directed by Philip Akin (Obsidian/Shaw Festival). At the Aki Studio Theatre, Daniels Spectrum (585 Dundas East). Runs to October 19, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Saturday-Sunday 2 pm. $15-$35, Tuesday pwyc. 416-531-1402. See listing. Rating: NNNN
In The Mountaintop, playwright Katori Hall uses a clever device to delve into the man behind the myth known as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Setting the play on the 1968 night before King was assassinated in Memphis, where he was fighting for the rights of striking sanitation workers, Hall begins by showing a tired, worn-out man (Kevin Hanchard) having to reach into his last physical and emotional reserves to keep up his passionate struggle.
King’s just delivered his most famous and moving speech, about having been allowed to travel to the mountaintop and see the Promised Land.
But a few minutes after he returns to his motel room, he meets a flirtatious, chatty chambermaid, Camae (Alana Hibbert), who changes his life.
Director Philip Akin’s production sets up both characters so well that we quickly feel we’ve known them for years. There’s an intimacy and chemistry between the actors, something they share easily with the audience, that pulls us emotionally into a tale that’s never just a history lesson.
Hanchard gives us several views of the freedom fighter who campaigns not only for blacks, but for all God’s children. His feet smell, he has holes in his socks, he’s exhausted, but he won’t give up the cause.
The actor switches easily from one aspect of King to another: a warm father and husband, a seductive man talking to an attractive woman, a preacher who utters mellifluous, rhythmic, inspirational tropes. He even gives us a glimpse of the man’s unconscious arrogance.
Importantly, his King is likewise a man scared of being alone and the rumble of thunder. It’s not just a carry-over from childhood, for he never knows whether the crack is a meteorological event or signals a bullet rushing toward his heart. This pioneer has lived for years knowing that death might be just around the corner.
Hibbert brings richness and warmth to Camae, aware that she’s talking to someone who’s simply a man as well as a respected figurehead. She becomes his interrogator, not always agreeing with his pacifist integration policies but offering a separate-but-equal viewpoint that he has to counter with strong arguments.
The script has a few surprises you won’t see coming, including comic moments that the actors play as passionately as they do the fights, physical and verbal, that spring up between them.
Judith Bowden’s set and Kevin Lamotte’s lighting provide the production’s requisite stage magic, with Freddy Gabrsek’s sound design giving a period subtext and Andrew Smith’s almost overwhelming projections filling in decades of post-King black history.
