Blair Underwood and Nicole Beharie to Star in THE MOUNTAINTOP Benefit Reading

Signature Theatre will present a benefit reading of Pulitzer Prize winner and Signature Premiere Resident Katori Hall’s acclaimed 2009 play The Mountaintop. Emmy, Grammy, Peabody Award Winner and Tony nominee Blair Underwood and Emmy nominee Nicole Beharie star in this reading directed by Brandon J. Dirden. Underwood and Beharie play Martin Luther King Jr. and Camae, a maid at the Memphis motel he’s staying in the night before his assassination. The reading will take place at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
 
Two-time Tony nominated playwright Katori Hall won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hot Wing King, which made its world premiere at Signature in 2020. Just over a decade earlier, The Mountaintop premiered and received immediate acclaim in the U.K. at Theatre503, where The Independent wrote that “it's a thrill to be stuck in that [motel] room with Camae and King…it is a relationship that is breathtaking, hilarious, and heart-stopping.” The play transferred to the West End and won the Olivier Best New Play Award, before coming to Broadway in 2011 in a production with Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett. It has continued to be performed, and beloved, in productions throughout the U.S. and abroad.
 
Now, Underwood and Beharie take on the complex roles in Hall’s riveting blurring of history and imagination. Underwood has most recently been celebrated for his performance in the 2024 horror hit Longlegs. Skyrocketed to fame for his role in L.A. Law, Underwood became a fixture of both the small and big screen (American Crime Story: Impeachment, Dear White People, Dirty Sexy Money, The New Adventures of Old Christine, In Treatment, Quantico, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s Origin, Deep Impact, and many more). Onstage, he made his Broadway debut as Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire in 2012, and in 2020, earned a Tony nomination for his role in the Roundabout Theatre revival of A Soldier’s Play. Beharie, meanwhile, made her Broadway debut in 2010 in A Free Man of Color. Acclaimed for her film roles in American Violet, Shame, and Miss Juneteenth, and her accomplished, genre-spanning TV career (Sleepy Hollow, Black Mirror, Little Fires Everywhere, Scenes from a Marriage), she was recently nominated for an Emmy for her role as Christina Hunter in The Morning Show.
 
Actor and director Dirden, who himself played Martin Luther King Jr. on Broadway in All the Way, returns to Signature following his Obie Award-winning turn in their 2012 revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.