Who was Martin Luther King, Jr., the man? And what might have happened inside the dingy four walls of room number 306 at The Lorraine Motel in Memphis the night of April 3, 1968, between his eerily prescient final speech and his assassination?

The Mountaintop, Katori Hall’s award-winning play that debuted in London’s West End in 2009 and on Broadway in 2011, re-imagines answers to these questions. And in the hands of Kalamazoo’s Black Arts and Cultural Center’s Face Off Theatre Company as part of their inaugural season, it’s a riveting, poignant, and surprisingly hilarious 90-minute two-person show
that reveals Dr. King’s humanity and gives us pause about his legacy.

We hear him pee, see him smoke and drink a little too much, smell his stinky feet, hear him cuss, and feel the sexual tension as the married preacher shamelessly flirts and attempts to seduce a hotel maid. At the same time, in his clever banter and the truths that emerge in moments of poetic righteous indignation, he is elevated.

It’s Dr. King’s last night on earth, whether he knows it or not. He wants coffee and cigarettes as he settles in to work on a speech. He’s agitated. He jumps when thunder cracks and searches for wire taps in the phone. When the maid arrives to deliver his coffee, he’s smitten. She’s down-home, beautiful, charming. Their chemistry is electric; when they shake hands he jumps as if lighting has struck again. They laugh and play, challenge each other’s values, and go deep in a short amount of time. She calls him a “bougie Negro” and suggests “civil rights will kill you before them Pall Malls will.”

But she mistakenly reveals her true identity (he fears she’s a spy, or as he says, “an incognegro.”), catalyzing a powerful plot twist that morphs the play’s naturalism into magical realism, pulled off with interesting and convincing effects.

From his first utterances, Kenajuan Bentley captures the cadence, resonance and timber of MLK’s voice as well as an appropriate swagger in body. In him, the power and spirit of the icon is matched by the humble weaknesses and overwhelming desires of the man. Bentley embodies the extraordinary man intent on the Promised Land though he knows he may very well never get there himself. “I am a sinner, not a saint,” he proclaims, in defiance, as if having to hold the projection of being more than a man were actually degrading.

Bentley’s energy and spiritedness is positively matched by Tanisha Pyron as Camae, a marvelous character she brings to life with gusto. Their chemistry together is palpable, and she shines in her powerful monologues, especially when she puts on his jacket and shoes, leaps onto the bed and delivers an imitative impromptu speech and at the very end, against the backdrop of a
projected montage of historic images from 1968 to the present that hits like visual gunfire.

Director Marissa Harrington chose her actors well and creates a balanced stage with blocking full of energy and movement with nary a lull or dull moment, bringing to life a passionate and moving production.

By infusing history with imagination, and playing on our collective memory, this play tells an intriguing story that makes us question the meaning of heaven and hell, of mortality and immortality, and how far we’ve actually come in terms of human rights and social justice since Dr. King’s assassination. Was the end of his final speech truly prophetic? “I may not
get there with you . . . but we as a people will get to the Promised Land,” he proclaimed. The Mountaintop ultimately asks us to consider our responsibility in making it so.

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