REVIEW: The Mountaintop (Round House Theatre)
Preview: The one-act, two-role, three-digit-runtime parable that is Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, opening this week at Round House, reminded me how under-utilized character explorations of Martin Luther King, Jr. are. Classic TV series The Boondocks (in)famously covered an alternate history of his survival into a post-9/11 world, in what became one of its best episodes. Figures like him should be ripe for analysis. Perhaps in our current political environment, it’s faux-pas? We should be revering figures like him, not reviling, in a sense. Which is largely understandable, yet, everyone is human. Perhaps embracing the potential of revile can give us new appreciations of positive figures?
Book: Over the course of one night — his final night — at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Dr. King is visited by a specter from beyond: a spunky maid by the name of Carrie Mae. King, being at the peak of his influence and stressed to the core, makes increasingly-flirty advances, eliciting the first of many audience groans that allude at the erosion of their image of this American hero. However, when his health suddenly takes a turn, Carrie Mae (Camae) divinely intervenes; after all, she’s no maid, but an angel sent by God to carry him to the other side the following morning. As King collects his senses from the revelation, the play explores his bargaining of mortality. Hall writes him as a façade of the confident, firm-footed Civil Rights leader that we imagine, painting him warmly under Sherrice Mojgani’s subtly effective lighting. However, King is written as too strongly rooted in his spiritual convictions, odd as it may sound. As someone who dedicated his life and career to divinity, and fears God above all else, you think he would be more understanding when presented with the proof that not only is God real, she is directly commuincating with him. Instead, he throws somewhat of a temper tantrum as if his spirituality had been nothing more than an act. It’s a confusing handling of his persona that doesn’t add up as much as his womanizer behavior and other contradictory behaviors do. By the end, he seems to be more accepting, though reluctantly; it’s not very satisfying. 5/10
Acting: King’s persona is occupied by Ro Boddie, who previously took the role on in a Cleveland production. I was a big fan of his work in Round House’s recent production of Radio Golf, where I thought his presence was much more eye-catching and entertaining than his foil, JaBen Early’s Harmond. But here it’s Early whom I desired, whose calmer demeanor (and resemblance) I felt would have been a grander welcome to the character of Dr. King. On the bright side, despite the miscast, Boddie puts a solid effort to bring Dr. King to life, despite being often eclipsed by the paramount charisma of Renea S. Brown’s Camae. Many a time she puts on a better Dr. King when parodying the man than Boddie himself, not to mention her quips of sass and gentle understanding as both an angel and a maid. Luckily for us we get good doses of performance from both actors thanks to the strength of Hall’s dialogue. 7/10
Production: Paige Hathaway’s single hotel room is versatile and spacious, creating lots of opportunity for director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg to work with. Zavier A.L. Taylor’s galactic projection work later in the play was a pleasant aesthetic surprise, as well. 7/10
VisDev: Pre-show staging is a lushly-lit hotel room colored with jewel tones, which gives a very extra-wordly vibe that connects the Earth to the heavens metaphorically. Program art is a sepia-toned illustration of King smoking on a balcony disconnected from the foreground, facing back towards the margin, wherein there is another cigarette peering. I enjoy the isolation it evokes, in that he is technically alone in this room, peering into the literal other side. 7/10
VERDICT: While it doesn’t hit any tall peaks, The Mountaintop remains an intriguing character analysis of an American legend.
