[caption id="attachment_67534" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="The Mountaintop"]
"The Mountaintop" By Katori Hall • at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St., NYC • With Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett • Through Jan. 2012
Katori Hall's treatment of the last hours of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Mountaintop," is fantasy posing as realism.
In London, where the play was first produced, it won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play, and brought audiences to their feet at every performance it played at Trafalgar Studios in the West End. The full houses at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre are rewarding the stars, Samuel L.Jackson and Angela Bassett, with equal enthusiasm, rising the moment the lights dim out on the play's final words.
Hall has placed Dr. King in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening of April 3, 1968, and asked us to share her version of his final hours before he was assassinated on the balcony outside his room.
King craves a cup of coffee, and Room Service, apparently closed, seems relucant to provide it. When the coffee comes, it is brought by the chatty Carrie-Mae, called Camae for short, who presents herself as a new employee on her first day working at the motel.
The producers have asked that writers not reveal the play's "secret." It will have to suffice to say that it is obvious that Camae isn't exactly as she describes herself - and her identity only becomes apparent in the play's climactic ending. The character is named after playwright Hall's mother, who grew up near the Lorraine Motel
Angela Bassett, so memorable as Tina Turner in the film biography, "What's Love Got to Do With It," is dealing with an almost unplayable part in trying to make Camae credible. She succeeds only sporadically. Director Kenny Leon, who helmed Denzel Washington's fine performance in the 2010 revival of August Wilson's "Fences," seems to have had less success with Bassett.
Samuel L. Jackson, 62, long associated with the Negro Ensemble Company, is making his belated Broadway debut. He's on firmer ground than his co-star, and he comes through with a richly realistic and superbly satisfying performance, start to finish. As it happens, Jackson was an usher at Dr. King's funeral.
An article appeared in a recent issue of New York Magazine with a two-page, full-color photograph of the set David Gallo designed for "The Mountaintop." It is an exact replica of the actual Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, accurate down to the tiniest detail.
Among Gallo's many assignments is a production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" in which actress Bassett appeared. He's also credited with the complicated and rather brilliant projection design which occupies perhaps the final eight minutes of "The Mountaintop," a sequence so strong that it comes fairly close to redeeming the entire venture.
What ultimately doesn't work for Katori Hall's concept is the idea of injecting an element of fantasy into what would otherwise have been a sufficiently strong realistic situation.
