The Mountaintop

MTC's The Mountaintop is a bit surreal at times although the acting by the two person cast is great. It's a vision of Martin Luther King’s last night before his assassination, set in a motel room.   Camae - the bold young woman who brings his room service - forces him to confront his own fears and desires. The play assumes a basic knowledge of Martin Luther King, which I guess all Americans would have and as presumably anyone who is likely to attend an Australian production would also have.  Nevertheless, in spite of his fame, I understand that King was a private person behind his well-known rhetoric so of necessity the play is completely imaginary. 

Here's one review of it.  The performance we attended was followed by an open forum with the director and the actors.  One aspect of the discussion that struck a chord with me was a question about the "Americanism" of the play.   This is reflected in Woodhead's review, who refers to that fact that "it's a shade strong on US triumphalism and self-absorption".   The response to this was along the lines that it's an American play, and so that's the way it's been presented.  Fair enough;  on reflection, I don't think there would have been any alternative.

Just for the record, the gunshot that most of the audience were expecting doesn't occur!  However, the play does seek to exhort the audience to "carry the baton" in relation to a whole range of issues, in keeping with King's own work which extended over and beyond his civil rights campaigns.  I think I even recall a reference to "boat people".   Although the exhortation was impressive, the response from the audience was, well, muted.   In the discussion, LaBonté said something to the effect that on different nights, audiences had reacted differently.  There may have been pockets of enthusiastic response on the night we were there, but on the whole the response was fairly subdued.   Notwithstanding that a more enthusiastic result may have been "politically correct", I think it's unlikely that an Australian audience in a theatre would ever rise in their seats in the way that an American civil rights rally might have done!