America’s greatest civil rights leader spends the last night of his life with a sultry, saucy motel maid in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, a concept likely to rile those who prefer to remember Dr. Martin Luther King as a sin-and-vice-free saint, but one that makes for gripping, thought-provoking dramatic sparks at the Garry Marshall Theatre just in time for Black History Month 2019.

 Hall’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning play gives us Dr. King warts and all as he shares Pall Malls and whiskey-spiked coffee with Camae, who’s come to deliver a cup of room-service coffee but soon enough has the married minister feeling all hot and bothered (and not necessarily in a bad way).

King asks Camae for advice about shaving his mustache, tells her she’s pretty both in words and “witcho eyes,” and listens to her tips on smoking. (“Like it’s going out of style, like you need, it, like you want it.”)

 Camae, meanwhile, dons King’s jacket and footwear and shows him the kind of speech she’d make if she were actually in his shoes, namely “The white man ain’t got nothin’ I want. Fuck the white man! I say, fuck’em!”

Clearly, Hall’s depiction of the late, indubitably great Dr. King is a far cry from the image school kids have formed of the civil rights pioneer in social studies classes across the land, but there’s serious talk as well, about Martin’s successes and his failures, about his hopes for the future and his fears for his life, about Malcolm X, shot dead at 39, the age King is on April 4, 1968, and about God herself, (Not a typo.)

And then The Mountaintop takes an unanticipated detour, one that I won’t even hint at, except to say that for those willing to take playwright Hall’s leap of faith, the results will prove powerful indeed.

 It’s no easy task to embody a man and a legend, but Gilbert Glenn Brown (following in the footsteps of David Oyelowo on the big screen, Paul Winfield on the small, and Samuel L. Jackson on Broadway) aces the assignment to mesmerizing perfection, intense, seductive, alternately cocksure and vulnerable, and most of all, heartbreakingly human.

Carolyn Ratteray, who’s done everything from Molière to Shaw to Bekah Brunstetter in 2017’s much-acclaimed The Cake, matches her leading man every step of the way, giving us a Camae who’s mysterious, flirty, smart, sassy, outspoken and more, much much more.

Gregg T. Daniel directs masterfully, beginning with a wordless opening sequence (a Daniel original) presaging Dr. King’s balcony death (just one of lighting designer JM Montecalvo’s stunning contributions), then eliciting two of the finest performances in town, and finally adding dramatic visuals to Hall’s already shattering ending (with special snaps to a Wendell C. Carmichael-designed climactic costume change, to a fabulous new wig by wig-and-hair designer Shelia Dorn, and above all to Yee Eun Nam for one of her most spectacular projection designs).

 Scenic designer Alex M. Calle has created a Memphis motel room that looks like it could be a dead ringer for the one Martin Luther King slept in on the last night of his life, particularly as decorated with John M. McElveney’s meticulously accurate properties, while sound designer Robert Arturo Ramizez adds to the drama with a backdrop of steadily pouring rain punctuated by some terrifying claps of thunder, and just wait for those eleventh-hour reveals. Kudos too to fight director Edgar Landa.

Katherine Nigh is dramaturg. Giselle N. Vega is production stage manager.

Casting is by Amy Lieberman. Andre G. Brown and Cherish Monique Duke are understudies.

As risk-taking as it is rewarding for those willing to embark upon the journey, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop climbs to high summits indeed.

Garry Marshall Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.
www.GarryMarshallTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
February 7, 2019
Photos: Aaron Batzdorff

Tags: Dr. Martin Luther King, Garry Marshall Theatre, Katori Hall, Los Angeles Theater Review