The hotel room was vintage 1960s with its black rotary phone, flat hard bed and dime-store pictures on the wall. It was the setting for a Broadway play about the last night in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, TN.
I went to New York this week with several friends to see actors Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett perform superbly in a two-person one-act play without intermission. It didn’t need an intermission, because they were riveting. I don’t think any of us who filled most of the seats at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater wanted to be interrupted with a short bathroom break.
Several times when I looked over the audience, their eyes were glued to the actors on the stage as if they were watching a movie and didn’t want to miss anything.
The play – called “The Mountaintop” – doesn’t officially open until Oct. 13, so we saw a preview. It is a play about a man confronting his death, his fears and his legacy. It was written by Katori Hall and directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony Award nominee for several of August Wilson’s plays, including Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in the 2010 “Fences.” The play was first performed in London, and it won Hall the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010.
This play centered around King’s last night before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray on the balcony outside his hotel room at the hotel. The action takes place after he has given his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at a church in Memphis on the night of April 3, 1968. He had returned to Memphis for another march in support of sanitation workers who had gone on strike to protest poor wages and bad working conditions. The first march had ended in chaos and looting.
Bassett plays a hotel maid named Camae who brings him coffee. At first, she comes off as a star-struck fan – supplying him with Pall Mall cigarettes, a little booze for his coffee, and stroking his ego. But we – and he – slowly realize that she’s no ordinary housekeeper. He even wondered if she was sent by the FBI.
This was Jackson’s first major role on the Broadway stage, according to his bio in Playbill. He was an understudy in August Wilson’s “The Piano Lessons” in 1990. Bassett was in Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” on Broadway in 1988.
Both were so natural in their roles that it was like watching them on the screen rather than live on stage. They blended like coffee and cream in such a way that made the play a pleasure to follow and them a joy to watch. Jackson didn’t act like King; he was the man. He said in an interview in a Wall Street Journal blog that he prepared for the role by listening to King’s conversation voice so he could mimic that moreso than the speeches. Even Jackson’s oval-shaped face seemed to have been bulked up to look like King’s round full face. And Bassett – what can you do but give her praise.
The set appeared to be true to form, too. Set and projection designer David Gallo had chosen items to give the place the look of a 1960s hotel room. It had a simplistic and uncluttered Howard Johnson ambience, and the beds looked as uncomfortable as I’m sure they were back then.
As I watched Jackson and Bassett go tic-for-tat, I wondered how much of the play was real and how much was made up. Was King’s given name really Michael? Did he call his wife Corrie? Did she always forget to pack his toothbrush? Did he give her artificial flowers rather than his normal real flowers so she could always remember him?
More importantly, did he fear the clap of thunder – which sounded like gunfire on this stormy night – and his own death at so young an age (39)? There was a long serio-comedic stretch in the play where Jackson as King tried to persuade God to give him a little more time to finish his work.
It was hard to juxtapose that image of King to the man who in his speeches talked about his own death and his courage in facing it. In his “Mountaintop” speech that night, he had even alluded to his own death. We all remember the lines:
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
Was he as courageous as he sounded? Would any of us be? It’s an interesting question.
The play comes at an appropriate time because the King Memorial on the National Mall in Washington is open and will be dedicated Oct. 16. I visited the structure a month ago and was overwhelmed by its bulk and stature. King emerges from a mountain of white stone – arms crossed, serious-faced, towering over us, looking yonder. One of my friends didn’t think it was a good likeness.
In back of it is a low curved marble wall inscribed with quotes from his speeches – Alabama 1963, District of Columbia 1949, Norway 1964, Georgia 1967, California 1967.
I saw The Mountaintop last month and I loved it. I thought it was a compelling look at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. not as an icon but as a man. It’s written with grace and sensitivity. Both Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett were riveting. I do have to wonder, though, what King would have made of that statue.
Thanks, Esther. I’m glad you enjoyed the play as much as I did. Other people have also wondered what King would think of such a towering mounument to himself.
Sherry