The Mountaintop
Trinity Rep is currently performing The Mountaintop by Katori Hall (directed by Kent Gash). It takes place in a single 100-minute act in the motel room outside of which Martin Luther King was shot on the balcony. It is a supernatural play about a hotel maid cum angel (Mia Ellis) who prepared King (Joe Wilson, Jr.) for his death.
Wilson is a Trinity actor of long-standing and great versatility (he was the emcee in Cabaret, for example) and this is one of his absolute best performances in a history of outstanding work. His King is paranoid (the FBI was investigating him), stubborn, and deeply sensitive. Ellis just about steals the show, theater, and Providence in her feisty turn as an angel whose job it is to prepare King for both his death and place in history.
The evening flies by (Trinity should lean more toward these one-act plays and less toward the three-hour marathons that seem to serve as some test of theatrical chops). It’s poignant and sad, but also hilarious and invigorating. My favorite line was when King is on the phone with God (a black woman who has a very early cell phone) and he asks who will replace him in the movement. There’s a brief silence, and then he yells, absolutely stunned, “Jessie?! Jessie?!”
Ellis has a sassy confidence and speech pattern that brook no nonsense, and Wilson perfectly conveys the mixed emotions of someone who is driven to lead a movement that he simply knows must be led by him. It’s a cross between ego and humility that works with wonderful acting and direction.
The one drawback is a closing montage that will give every liberal the equivalent of a cocaine high, but which is contrived (O.J. Simpson, Rodney King?) and an attempt to be au courant (Meryl Streep’s speech, Trump’s inauguration). But this is theater these days all too often—instead of entertainment or escapism, it’s sitting in a lecture hall.
That last few minutes aside, this is a wonderful production and an opportunity for a different view of a pivotal point in our history.
