The Mountaintop or the legacy of Martin Luther King play in London
Martin Luther King gave his ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech, the last of his career, at a rally during the sanitation workers’ strike at Mason Temple, the World Headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, in Memphis on April 3rd 1968.
The Mountaintop by Katori Hall is on show at the Theatre503 until Saturday. The play is set in room 306 in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the evening after King gave his ‘Mountaintop’ address and the night before his assassination. When King calls for room service and orders a coffee, it is brought to his room by Camae, a mysterious maid from the motel. They spend the evening together, talking, smoking and drinking until Camae eventually explains that she is an angel sent by God to prepare King for his death. Is she an angel or merely a vision? Did Martin Luther King have some sort of premonition about his death as his speech at Mason Temple suggests? Has too much importance not instead been given to his words with the hindsight of his death?
The play presents King, above all, as a man. He is not perfect and has his weaknesses; he smokes, he drinks and may have a had ‘a weakness for women’ as Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990), a close associate of King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), stated in his autobiography. Most of all, like all men, King is a frightened man. In the play, he claims that fear is the only thing that unites all men, black and white. He is scared of thunder and lightening; he is scared of death and pain. He does not want to die.
Nevertheless, despite his fears and flaws, King appears a great man and stirs the audience’s compassion. Beyond the fear of death, he refuses to die because he still has so much work to do, so much to accomplish and so much to fight for. His fears and paranoia were also to a large extent justified and understandable...
Read entire article at History Today (UK)
The Mountaintop by Katori Hall is on show at the Theatre503 until Saturday. The play is set in room 306 in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the evening after King gave his ‘Mountaintop’ address and the night before his assassination. When King calls for room service and orders a coffee, it is brought to his room by Camae, a mysterious maid from the motel. They spend the evening together, talking, smoking and drinking until Camae eventually explains that she is an angel sent by God to prepare King for his death. Is she an angel or merely a vision? Did Martin Luther King have some sort of premonition about his death as his speech at Mason Temple suggests? Has too much importance not instead been given to his words with the hindsight of his death?
The play presents King, above all, as a man. He is not perfect and has his weaknesses; he smokes, he drinks and may have a had ‘a weakness for women’ as Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990), a close associate of King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), stated in his autobiography. Most of all, like all men, King is a frightened man. In the play, he claims that fear is the only thing that unites all men, black and white. He is scared of thunder and lightening; he is scared of death and pain. He does not want to die.
Nevertheless, despite his fears and flaws, King appears a great man and stirs the audience’s compassion. Beyond the fear of death, he refuses to die because he still has so much work to do, so much to accomplish and so much to fight for. His fears and paranoia were also to a large extent justified and understandable...