The Mountaintop
Trafalgar Studios
Hello Dolly!
Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park
Meet the black Elvis. A man who got up on stage, a man who ‘sang’, a man who was adored by millions, a man who was King. Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, is set in a Memphis hotel on the eve of Martin Luther King’s assassination. I feared this would be an official court portrait, a stiff and reverent depiction of flawless martyrdom.
The play’s opening device is thunderously inept. King orders a tray of refreshments which arrive in the hands of a sexy young maid and, hey presto, they fall into a complex and revealing relationship. The maid’s star-struck flirtatiousness and King’s carnal yearnings help diminish our disbelief in this accidental alliance, and the character study that emerges is a fascinating collection of virtues and frailties, of human fragments.
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