Review: THE MOUNTAINTOP at Geffen Playhouse

Outside, the world is on fire as a turbulent decade burbles toward its conclusion. Vietnam, the fight for civil rights, riots, and on it goes. Inside a crummy motel room in Memphis, a weary man prepares a speech and tries – successfully – to get a cup of coffee sent up from room service which has ceased its operation. It’s a stormy night with thunder and lightning pelting down. So where, dear theater-goer, would you rather be? Where is the more interesting story unfolding? Inside, sheltered from the wind and rain? Or outside in the tempest where that tired man with the smelly feet and the heroic voice so very clearly belongs?

For Katori Hall, author of THE MOUNTAINTOP, the answer is an obvious one. The drama is wherever the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. happens to be, and tonight, April 3, 1968, it’s amidst the cheap sheets and unremarkable furniture of the Lorraine Motel. In this assessment, the playwright is partially correct. So for 90 minutes, we watch as Jon Michael Hill’s King passes the time with Camae, a mysterious motel maid played by Amanda Warren, in a revival of THE MOUNTAINTOP,  directed by Patricia McGregor for The Geffen Playhouse.

Hill and Warren pair up engagingly and Hall’s central character  – and, yes, also his foil – can never be uninteresting. But Hall’s play can and often is. THE MOUNTAINTOP is not a new play, and it has been staged plenty of times in the 10 plus years since its Broadway premiere with Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett. Whether you have the play before and know (or can guess) what’s coming or if you can be taken by surprise, the central problem is the same. As the depiction of a chance encounter between two very different people, THE MOUNTAINTOP has some interesting observations to make. But the second the stakes change and Camae proves to be something other than who she first presented herself to be, the play springs a leak and stumbles to its hagiographic and predictable conclusion.

At this point, it can’t be easy for any actor to take on the role of MLK given the image so any people already possess of the man. Hill (a Tony nominee for SUPERIOR DONUTS) presents larger than he is. Despite a baritone voice that he can use for multiple purposes, fatigue seems to roll off the actor like perspiration. King is due to join striking Memphis sanitation workers, and the sermon he is practicing begins “Why America is going to hell” (he privately predicts “they gonna burn me on the cross for this one.”) He should go to bed, but he’s out of cigarettes and his wife forgot to pack his toothbrush, so he decides to try to call her. Then Camae arrives bearing coffee and the newspaper and everything changes.

She’s beautiful, engaging, a bit earthy and she speaks her mind. This is her first day on the job and of course she knows who he is. Bewitched, King doesn’t know whether to try to bed her, chat her up or pump himself up in her estimation, so he tries to do all three. Camae gets the game. She’s an admirer, but she also has a job to do. Warren is taller than Hill, and her take-no-guff maid matches and inflames Hill’s brio with every retort. Their encounter is part seduction, part power play, and the two actors finesse it smartly until the proverbial shoe drops and matters turn both maudlin and silly.

The not-so-very-groundbreaking point here is that Martin Luther King, Jr.  was a great if imperfect man, but ultimately just a man, a fact that Hall’s King has some difficulty reconciling. And there will be others to carry on his work. Fair enough. Hill’s performance gives us a King who is betimes a showman and at others, just a person who needs someone to talk to when the room is empty and his wife isn’t picking up the phone.  This characterization also flies in the face of the historical context that THE MOUNTAINTOP insists we recognize. We’re not just watching any man struggle with his demons.

McGregor’s technical team gets it right. The motel designed by Rachel Myers is notable for its attention to run-down details. Sound designer Cricket S. Myers keeps the tempest raging and lighting designer Lap Chi Chu and projection designer Yee Eun Nam have some sleek visuals to display.    

Bottom line: THE MOUNTAINTOP is a diverting enough evening without reaching great heights.

THE MOUNTAINTOP plays through July 9 at The Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. 

Photo of Amanda Warren and Jon Michael Hill by Isaak Berliner. 

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