Theatre in Review: The Mountaintop (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre) This is the week of Martin Luther King tributes. In Washington, DC, his new memorial was dedicated a couple of days ago, and, on Broadway, Katori Hall's new play, The Mountaintop, offers a portrait of him on the last night of his life. Armed with an Olivier Award and a pair of movie stars, the play is already selling out. But, just as the new DC memorial has been criticized by some for being vulgar and overbearing, I'm convinced that just as many people who love The Mountaintop -- which is looking like a big hit -- will find it to be a work of dubious taste. The curtain rises on David Gallo's picture-perfect recreation of the room at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, where King spent his last night before being gunned down on the balcony, the day after he made his eerily prophetic "I have been to the mountaintop" speech. He is alone, having sent the Rev. Ralph Abernathy is search of cigarettes. The first few minutes consist of him padding around the room, trying out the first lines of a new speech, smelling his shoes, trying to reach his wife, Coretta, on the phone, and calling room service for a cup of coffee. The latter is delivered by Camae, the motel's newest maid, who is visibly thrilled to be waiting on the great man. She fawns a little, he flirts a little. They chat about this and that. The dialogue is mildly charming, if largely inconsequential. Camae uses a few dirty words, then cringes in embarrassment -- a set-up that the playwright, Katori Hall, employs at least four times, by my count. It's three times too many. There are brief allusions to King's wandering eye, but Hall seems unwilling to explore any darkness in his character. King and Camae do argue about the effectiveness of nonviolence, and Malcolm X gets brought up, but the discussion is inconclusive. The playwright is capable of some wry turns of phrase: "Civil rights will kill you before those Pall Malls will," says Camae, sharing a cigarette with King. When he wonders how she knows so much about him, she replies, "Negro talk strikes faster than lightning." Then, when her knowledge of him begins to seem preternatural, she says, "I'm not just your ordinary day-old maid." It's at this point that The Mountaintop makes a sharp turn into religious fantasy with a series of revelations that are not to be discussed here. Much of it is of a prophetic nature, and some of it involves some surprisingly cutesy comedy. The real focus is less on King than on his legacy; the action climaxes with a brilliantly designed and staged coup de théâtre, which makes that legacy vividly clear. Still, for all the considerable imagination that has gone into it, The Mountaintop hinges almost entirely on that one big twist and the cleverly staged finale; as such, it's a work propelled more by gimmicks than any particular historical or psychological insights. And its attempt to create a sentimental, comforting myth around one of the great crimes of the 20th century displays a dismaying lack of sense of occasion. There's no feeling for that tumultuous era ---the ugly emotions, the appalling violence, the sense of society coming apart at the seams. Absent any major conflict, the play is little more than a sermon about progress -- and not a very convincing one, at that. Kenny Leon's direction helps to keep things lively, even if at times you wish he had exerted more control over his cast. Despite being nearly a quarter of a century older than the 39-year-old King, Samuel L. Jackson offers a finely detailed impersonation, capturing the distinct sound of his voice. His King is a bit of a smoothie, with pangs of conscience lurking underneath; he's also very aware that his days may be numbered. (In a neat bit, before using the phone, he takes it apart, looking for FBI bugs.) In contrast to Jackson's relatively subtle and restrained work, Angela Bassett's Camae is broad enough to be posted on a barn door. She drives each laugh line home with pile-driver force, and overdoes certain gestures, as when she buckles a bit at the knees and raises an arm, as if planning to testify. She improves, however, as Camae drops her sycophantic manner and begins to assert her authority, and she shines in her final moments. The physical production is especially accomplished. The set takes advantage of both Gallo's fine eye for detail and his penchant for working stage magic when you least expect it. Brian MacDevitt's typically subtle lighting makes use of a number of barely perceptible cues to signal changes in the play's tone and style. Dan Moses Schreier's sound design includes some disturbing bursts of thunder, as well as reinforcement for Branford Marsalis' incidental music. (The cast, apparently, is miked; at the performance I attended, you could see Jackson's capsule sticking out from his forehead.) Constanza Romero's costumes are spot-on. The Mountaintop is particularly disappointing because King's life was so rich in drama, and you could get any number of gripping plays out of it. (Michael Murphy's The Conscientious Objector, produced by The Keen Company in 2008, is a good example, with its account of King's break with Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War.) Hall soft-pedals one of the greatest tragedies of the second half of the 20th century; it's not what King deserves.--David Barbour 
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