Portraying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. must be like portraying Mahatma Gandhi or Jesus Christ: it comes with a lot of responsibility. And we all know how it ends.
In The Mountaintop, under Janet Wrightās direction, Dion Johnstone does a fine job of humanizing King who, for most of us, is more myth than man: freedom fighter, civil rights and anti-war activist, preacher, Nobel Peace Prize winner.
But King was first of all a man: a man who, according to rumour, was a womanizer. On occasion, he lied to his wife about the Pall Malls he smoked. And he took the occasional drink of something alcoholic. Of these three āweaknesses,ā playwright Katori Hall spins a tale of the hours before Kingās assassination at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968 on the second-floor balcony of Room 306 (meticulously rendered by set designer Ted Roberts) in the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tenn.
The title, of course, comes from Kingās famous speech, āIāve Been To The Mountaintop,ā delivered in support of striking sanitation workers, in Memphisās Mason Temple on April 3, 1968.
In the play, the writer introduces us to King, despondent over the less-than-anticipated turnout at Mason Temple and desperately wanting a cigarette, a cup of coffee (also on wife Coretta Kingās banned listed) while trying to write a speech that picks up on the elements of his āI Have a Dreamā speech. His regular companion on these tours, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, has gone out looking for cigarettes ā Pall Malls, nothing else will do ā when King calls for room service, which, it turns out, has ended for the night.
But, regardless, up comes room service in the form of pretty, flirtatious, sometimes foul-mouthed CamaeĢż (Crystal Balint). She not only brings coffee but she has cigarettes and theyāre Pall Malls, wouldnāt you know?
And sheās got a flask with something stronger than coffee in it. If you donāt twig to something at this point, you will later.
Thereās good chemistry between Johnstone and Balint. Heās handsome and sexy; sheās sassy and full of attitude and it looks like thatās where the play is going although Camae is turned off by men with āsmelly feetā and King has already sniffed his shoes in disgust. Still, thereās sexual attraction and they are together on a bed.
But The Mountaintop does a 180 at this point and turns into something akin to Itās A Wonderful Life. For me, this was a major disappointment and, for a while, it sucks the life out of the production. Thereās a lot of talk about āGodās plansā for King and the useful function of martyrdom ā which, in the present global crisis, rings alarm bells not church bells.
Fortunately, the powerhouse that was Martin Luther King, Jr. begins to build again ā prompted in part by a rousing āif I were youā speech that Camae, in Kingās jacket and shoes, comically delivers standing on the bed.
She concludes with āF*** the white man, f*** āem.ā but Kingās speech ā the speech he never got to deliver ā ends more peaceably with, āThe baton may be dropped but anyone can pick it up.ā The āpromised landā is almost here and his ādreamā of a peaceful world is imminent.
Projection designer Candelario Andrade puts together an amazing collage of people and events who have shaken the world, underscored by King, on the eve of what he knows will be his assassination, describing a world where āhunger is no more,ā where ādestruction is no more,ā where there is only ālove.ā
Johnstone is very powerful in these final scenes. And, of course, itās the message we all want to hear.
And then we go home to the TV news. āNobody said it would be easy,ā says Camae. She got that right.
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The Mountaintop runs until March 14 at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage. For tickets, call 604-687-1644 or go to .
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