Amanda Warren gives a tour-de-force performance as Camae, a hotel maid who brings coffee to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his final night alive.
Written by Katori Hall and enacted by two stellar performers, “The Mountaintop” at Geffen Playhouse scales rarified heights. In an immersive 90 minutes, this one-act play brings to spirited life the imagined final night of Dr. Martin Luther King in a Memphis hotel room, where he encounters a savvy hotel maid during a freak snowstorm.
While MLK (an invested Jon Michael Hill) is ostensibly the focus of “The Mountaintop,” the play is really a vehicle for Amanda Warren to shine as the smart and sassy Camae. As directed by Patricia McGregor, both actors do justice to the pointed yet humorous dialogue testing the bounds of civil rights and religion, but it is ultimately Warren who carries the play with her verve, both funny and graceful.
From the moment she enters the 1968 hotel room, Camae—short for Carry Mae, as she schools Martin—is a delightful Southern force he can hardly resist. She swears, laughs loudly, smokes the same brand of cigarette as him, pours whiskey from a flask into his coffee and even engages in a pillow fight with him, scattering down feathers around the room like the snow flurrying outside.
In an interesting and powerful scene, Camae also preaches atop one of the beds in his shoes and jacket saying what she would if she were MLK on the pulpit, but her message is less passionately peaceful like his and closer to the violent call to action of Malcolm X, who had been assassinated three years before.
Camae’s delivery and justification of her words are potent, though she later acknowledges the hate she knows they stems from, untempered by the preternatural love and compassion she commends in Martin.
After an unexpected metaphysical turn, the connection between Camae and Martin transcends their two lives, and the play eventually culminates in a true view from the fabled “mountaintop,” seeming to have been achieved in a future that allows a Black president of the United States.
Here the actors are bathed in a cascade of audio-visual imagery (designed by Yee Eun Nam) echoing Camae’s recitation of pivotal moments between then and now, not just for African Americans but the nation, including the Vietnam War that MLK was so vocal in denouncing.
The relatively small, standard hotel room (designed by Rachel Myers), framed by luminous bright lighting (by Lap Chi Chu), is mostly taken up by two double beds, allowing close and palpable human intimacy between Camae and Martin, even after the pivotal plot turn.
And costumes by Mylette Nora—a fit-and-flare blue service dress for Camae and brown suiting for Martin—capture the time and allow both to look good while cavorting, debating and ultimately trusting each other like soulmates.
The impassioned dialogue in this play overflows into a final plea from Martin on continuing the cause, carrying the baton forward, which might seem didactic as it breaks the fourth wall, but fits MLK’s legacy as a preacher and leader with an outsized heart. Still, it’s Camae’s heart that drives this play, as embodied by the talented Warren, and the reason besides its pertinent message that “The Mountaintop” is must-see theatre.
“The Mountaintop” continues at the Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles, through July 9, with shows Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets range from $39 to $129 and can be purchased by calling the box office at (310) 208-2028 or visiting GeffenPlayhouse.org. Run time is 90 minutes without intermission.