New York — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has just delivered his last speech, and he is holed up in a Memphis motel room craving coffee and cigarettes. When a beautiful maid knocks on his door, King spends his final night on earth in a game of seduction that will send him soaring toward the stars to find his place in eternity.
This is the essence of Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” the new Broadway play that opened Thursday night, directed by Atlanta's Kenny Leon and starring Samuel L. Jackson as King and Angela Bassett as Camae, his ministering angel of a maid. As thunder and lightning flash through the Lorraine Motel on April 3, 1968, what appears to be a slim bedroom comedy unscrolls to reveal a lofty and ambitious canvas. King may stand on a tiny non-descript balcony. But in historical terms, he is suspended at the edge of the universe — like some 20th century Moses looking out on a promised land that he can never enter.
In her Olivier Award-winning play first seen in London, Hall suggests King as both an ordinary man who cannot resist the temptations of earthly desire and as a figure of Biblical proportions, a Pall Mall-smoking prophet. That epic divide is what makes “The Mountaintop” such an enigmatic and structurally fractured piece of drama. If it is uneven at times to the point of preposterousness, it also packs considerable surprise, charm and intellectual grandeur.
Bassett, like the flirtatious Camae, has tricks up her sleeve.
This is Bassett’s show, and only she can redeem the slackness and moribund nature of the material. As a woman who will entertain and enchant King, and later perplex and confound him, Bassett is astonishingly good, as real and refreshing as the rain that soaks Camae on this troubled night. But Jackson, whose only previous Broadway credit was as an understudy in August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” seems out of his depth. In attempting to play King as some ordinary Southern preacher, the edgy “Pulp Fiction” star slathers his vocals with a syrup-y hokeyness and robs King of his essential dignity and gravitas. It’s not until King believes he is in danger that Jackson musters tension and vigor. (Is Camae a spy? Is she involved in some plot to blackmail him?)
Too little, too late.
Through the opening sequences of the 90-minute One Act, the play feels feather-light. As the supernatural element of the story comes into view, Hall succumbs to a forced and sophomoric feminist posture and theatrical flourishes that are more in line with TV’s “Bewitched” and “Dead Like Me” than Tony Kushner and August Wilson. It would not be surprising for King to talk to God, but you may be stunned at how he does it. There are some nifty special effects to be sure, but most are tacked on to the end. To give too much away would be a disservice to theater-goers.
We can and must say that Brian MacDevitt’s lighting is sumptuous, Dan Moses Schreier’s soundscape is crisp and evocative. David Gallo’s sets and Constanza Romero’s costumes stick with the quotidian nature of the piece: unremarkable clothes and a motel room framed by a pair of double beds and a window of orange curtains.
By the end of the play, a cosmic, fundamental change has swept over the proceedings, and Bassett unleashes a stunning free-form monologue that encapsulates the history of culture from King’s day to the present, and includes references to 9/11 and President Obama. It’s a riveting “free-at-last” moment emblazoned with the tingling, time-swept nature of great drama—a spoken-word rant that fits in the continuum of Ntozake Shange, “Def Poetry” and Lynn Nottage.
Oddly enough, this whole affair reminds me of a line from Laurie Anderson’s pop song, “Strange Angels.” “History,” Anderson murmurs, “is an angel being blown backward into the future.” When kings are born, and when they die, the heavens sometimes cry out in terror. “Camae,” we are told, is short for Carrie Mae, which kind of sounds like “carry me.” Perhaps this mysterious figure has come to carry King home.
Theater review
“The Mountaintop”
Grade: C+
Through Jan. 15. $76.50-$131.50, with $34.50 day-of rush tickets. Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St., New York. 800-432-7250, telecharge.com
Bottom line: Angela Bassett rules this uneven play.
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