KIM LORRAINE PHOTOGRAPHY
Hassiem Muhammad and Kendra Holloway co-star in “The Mountaintop” at Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, through May 3.
Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” at Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken through May 3, wastes no time. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. we meet returning to his motel room isn’t a saint cast in bronze. He is tired, irritable, chain-smoking and more than a little scared.
Set on April 3, 1968, at The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the night before King’s assassination, the play doesn’t aim for historical accuracy. Instead, Hall imagines a long night of reckoning during which the public voice of a movement collides with the private doubts of the man carrying it. Hassiem Muhammad leans into that tension, giving us a King who paces, rants, second-guesses, panics at a thundercrack, and searches the room for threats that may or may not be there.
Then comes Camae.
Kendra Holloway’s motel maid arrives with coffee, cigarettes, a flask of whiskey, and zero patience for pretense. She’s funny, sharp, charismatic and disarmingly direct, and the moment she steps into the room, the play finds its pulse. What starts as flirtation quickly turns into something more probing as Camae needles King’s ego and refuses to let him hide behind his own legend.
Director Jamil A.C. Mangan keeps things moving at a steady clip, letting the laughs land without undercutting the unease that hangs over the room. When the play veers into more surreal territory — and it does, decisively — the production commits fully, trusting the audience to follow along. You’ll need to buckle your seat belt and settle in for a bumpy ride at this point, but trust me, the play nails the landing.
KIM LORRAINE PHOTOGRAPHY
Kendra Holloway and Hassiem Muhammad in “The Mountaintop.”
Muhammad doesn’t try to imitate King, but when he locks into the Baptist minister’s oratorical cadence, the effect is chillingly familiar. More impressive, though, is how he handles the cracks in that voice — the flashes of anger, the exhaustion, the creeping realization that history may be closing in on him.
Holloway matches him stride for stride, giving Camae both the swagger and the weight the role demands. She may be a flirt but she is also a critic, unafraid to speak her mind.
Hall’s script circles a central idea: that history isn’t made by icons, but by people — flawed, reluctant and often overwhelmed. The baton gets passed whether they’re ready or not.
“The Mountaintop” doesn’t ask you to revere King. It asks you to see him clearly. And by the time the lights come up, the uncomfortable truth lingers: The baton he was so worried about dropping didn’t disappear. It’s still on the ground, waiting for us to pick it up.
Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken will present “The Mountaintop” through May 3. Visit milesquaretheatre.org.
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