Mountaintop -"He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land"

On 3rd April 1968 Martin Luther King spoke at a rally in Memphis where he said “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land." The following day as he left room 306 of his motel he was assassinated on the second floor balcony by James Earl Ray. This extraordinary moment in American civil rights history is the starting point for Katori Hall's remarkable play as she speculates on what happened in that motel room that night and how King felt about the civil rights movement he passionately but almost reluctantly led.

The result is a gripping, engaging and extraordinary two hander drama that runs without interval for an hour and forty five minutes, but the time flies by. King arrives in the hotel room alone, paranoid about being bugged by the FBI and spooked by a bomb threat on his plane to Memphis earlier in the day.  He is thirty nine and has campaigned for racial equality and an end to segregation though non violent resistance for thirteen years. In later years he had widened his campaigns to poverty and against the Vietnam War.
Gbolahan Obisesan plays King with a wonderful combination of intensity and power in speech but at the same time shows fear and uncertainty and regret for the distance from his wife and family. It shows why he succeeded in leading his communities but also the stress he must have endured in his campaigning. When Camae enters the room to deliver his coffee and cigarettes we see the effect this stress has had on him and a sense of loneliness and isolation.

Rochelle Rose is amazing as Camae , growing in power and presence as the show builds to its conclusion and excelling in the sequence looking to the future promised land as the civil rights baton is passed from campaigner after campaigner who have followed King. The chemistry between them is electric as their relationship changes with witty exchanges, sexual temptation and physical tension that build as we learn more about him and where he has reached in his life. Though the situation is imagined and surreal, they both make it believable and real. 

The design by Rajha Shakiry is excellent, the sixties motel room and the balcony outside are cleverly created in the intimate space of the studio with deft touches that tell us all is not as it seems. This is reinforced by a very effective lighting design by Lizzie Powell that flickers as a storm rages outside the room and picks out atmospheric changes on the balcony. The video montage projection by Nicky Dunn on the rear wall is dramatic and stunning whisking us through the US civil rights history after King's death putting his role in the context of change. Roy Alexander Weise brings all the elements together into a moving and educational drama that is one of the most powerful calls for us all to carry the baton of change forward and work for equality.

Nick Wayne

Five stars