The Mountaintop
Written by Katori Hall
Directed by Ron OJ Parson
at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis (map)
thru Oct 6 | tickets: $45-$65 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
Read review
More of a molehill than a mountaintop
Court Theatre presents
The Mountaintop
Review by Lawrence Bommer
Like Malcolm X, the once and future Dr. Martin Luther King died at 39, long before his time. In early April 1968 he was staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, crusading for striking sanitation workers, having once more left his family behind in Atlanta for a cause that was rapidly growing around him. On April 4, as we will never forget, he was assassinated on the motel’s balcony by the unspeakable James Earl Ray, a white supremacist with a cheap bullet that, during the riots that followed, managed to slaughter many others as well.
To cut to the crap, Katori imagines a befuddled and unpreacher-like Dr. King (talk about your feet of clay!) visited by Camae, an “angel of death” disguised as a chambermaid. She has blown in to accompany the incipient martyr to heaven– because presumably God has ordained that his head will be blown apart by a rogue sniper on the balcony just outside his crummy motel room.
Oh, but don’t worry–this befuddled freedom fighter is shown a vision of the future. (It can hardly be consoling, since it includes O.J. Simpson and Trayvon Martin: King also groans when he finds out that Jesse Jackson Jr. is his legatee—one of many lousy in-jokes in this crude comedy). In a star-swept epiphany with cascading photos from the future, King is told incessantly that “The drum must be passed on.” (So who, I’d like to know, runs with King’s baton today?) Pandering and meretricious, this “happy ending” insults the intelligence of almost everyone in the audience.
Why Camae must be disguised as a chambermaid when she’s really a celestial emissary whose wings are her beautiful boobies (“They get me wherever I want”) is one of many ridiculous subterfuges meant to titillate an audience: Given the sloppy writing here, none of the essential ingredients of a forceful fantasy are present and accounted for.
Among many explosions of gallows humor, near the end out of nowhere there’s a pillow fight between the dark angel and the imminent corpses, even though a minute before Dr. King is pleading for a reprieve from God to continue his cause. (Oh, God is a woman with a cellphone in 1968 who hangs up on King when he whines too much as he begs to live.) I guess the situation got a bit too serious for the playwright’s taste or, presumably, the audience’s so, literally, the feathers had to fly.
King (hapless David Alan Anderson, doing his damndest) is hardly a civil rights icon. He’s a heavy smoker (so is the angel/temptress) with smelly feet, horny (he comes onto her), earthy, and ineloquent. At the end this Dr. King actually confesses that all he wanted to be was a country preacher. (It’s a little late for that.) Well, man proposes and God disposes.
Unlike the charming or magnificent winged visitors in Carousel, Green Pastures, It’s a Wonderful Life,” or Angels in America, the un-seraphic Camae (Lisa Beasley, continuously strutting down an unseen runway) makes fun of King’s oratory, tells him his sermons should end with “Kill the white man!” (which received some creepy audience approval on opening night), makes fun of “fruits,” and can’t or won’t tell Dr. King why it’s God plan to shoot him dead. (But then, so insulting is the wishful thinking that propels this superstitious nonsense, that King never asks that either. We don’t want God implicated in the assassination but, of course, She is–from the very moment the angel clumsily reveals her mission.)
But the one who really plays God is the playwright. Katori Hall may mean, well but she delivers a very unfunny and utterly unconvincing rationalization for King’s murder. In effect, the angel tells him, “Well, life goes on—but not for you.” Imagine, if you believe this balderdash, how Dr. King must have really felt when he went out on that balcony the next day. Could a more sadistic demise be imagined? But that’s too much negativity. We get a great pillow fight, so it’s all good.
The Mountaintop is a molehill.
Rating: ★
The Mountaintop continues through October 6th at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis (map), with performances Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays 8pm, Saturdays 3pm and 8pm, Sundays 2:30pm and 7:30pm. Tickets are $45-$65, and are available by phone (773-753-4472) or online through their website (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at CourtTheatre.org. (Running time: 95 minutes, NO intermission)
Photos by Michael Brosilow
artists
cast
David Alan Anderson (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), Lisa Beasley (Camae)
behind the scenes
Ron OJ Parson (director), Scott Davis (scenic design), Melissa Torchia (costume design), Sarah Hughey (lighting design), Victoria Delorio (sound design), Mike Tutaj (projections), Kristiana Colon (consultant, spoken word), Martine Kei Green-Rogers (dramaturgy), Sara Gammage (production stage manager), William Collins (stage manager), Orbert Davis (musician), Michael Brosilow (photos).
13-0926
