Caleb Roberts

The Mountaintop

04/06/25

The Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Katori Hall’s 2009 play bristles with prescience in this stirring revival, directed by Rikki Henry. We’re in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, where a tired, sick Dr Martin Luther King Jr (Caleb Roberts) is planning on writing through the night. But, as the night in question is April 3 1968, we know this work will never make it to completion. Instead, assassination awaits.

The great man’s famous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” metaphor is gloriously realised in Hyemi Shin’s set design, the room balanced precariously on a slab of jutting rock protruding from the dark earth, offering little protection from the Biblical storm raging outside. There are climbing ropes too, tethering King to earthly reality even as they call for his ascension.

As ever, MLK is up against it. He’s in Memphis to promote his Poor People’s Campaign, and to support the striking Black sanitation workers. He’s a divisive figure: a hero to those he’s championing; a thorn in the side of the establishment. White supremacists hate him. How can he allow himself to rest when there is so much injustice to address? He calls the motel’s reception to ask for coffee, and salvation arrives in the form of housekeeping. It’s Camae (Shannon Hayes)’s first day on the job, and she’s beyond excited to meet her idol. Of course he can have one of her cigarettes.

In this fictional encounter between the real-life martyr and the made-up maid, Hall illuminates the flawed reality of King, who was, after all, a mere mortal, as prone to weakness as the rest of us. What set him apart wasn’t saintliness, it was conviction, purpose, determination – and the belief that he could be the change. As he laments the failures of his beloved America, the message comes across loud and clear, and is particularly important today: you don’t have to be special to make a difference. You just have to show up and fight.

Roberts and Hayes make an electric duo in this fierce two-hander, which lurches from realism to expressionism with thrilling momentum. Roberts imbues his warts-and-all depiction of MLK with so much warmth and charisma that we forgive him his trespasses. After all, if God (with whom he argues via the motel’s landline) can summon him to Heaven, who are we to argue with Her? Hayes makes for a perfect antagonist, her spirited Camae proving more than a match for the mighty King, challenging him both politically and personally. Issues of race and equity are illuminated rather than undermined by the humour that punctuates the couple’s verbal sparring, and Camae’s final monologue, accompanied by Lewis den Hertog’s black and white video design, is a stark reminder both of MLK’s legacy and of the battles yet to come.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

I Think We Are Alone

A scene from I Think We Are Alone by Sally Abbott @ Theatre Royal Plymouth. A Frantic Assembly and Theatre Royal Plymouth production. Directed by Kathy Burke and Scott Graham. (Opening 05-02-20) ©Tristram Kenton 02/20 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com

18/02/20

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

I Think We Are Alone is all about compartmentalisation: about the boxes we create in which we hide our deepest fears, our greatest losses, our inner conflicts. In this brilliantly choreographed show, those boxes are represented quite literally by big translucent rectangles, mounted on wheels and expertly moved around the stage by the cast to create a whole series of settings. They are the doors of a hospice, the walls of a dance club – sometimes they shimmer and pulsate with light, sometimes the ghosts of past memories stare mournfully through them, as if entreating us to help.

And sometimes those same rectangles crowd suffocatingly in upon the performers, encircling them, crushing them, sealing them off from salvation.

It would be easy in the midst of all this spectacle to lose track of the performances, but Sally Abbott’s meticulously crafted script never allows that to happen. We are introduced to six seemingly unconnected characters and then gradually, expertly, Abbott pulls the threads of the disparate tales together, showing us how characters interconnect with other, the elements they have in common, the things that separate them. As one revelation unfolds in the second act, I actually slap my forehead, wondering how I can have failed to see it coming. But I have, and that’s down to the skill of the writing.

Clare (Polly Frame) and Ange (Charlotte Bate) are struggling to get past a dark secret they have shared since childhood, a secret that threats to drive them apart forever. Josie (Chizzy Akudolu), the proud mother of Cambridge student, Manny (Caleb Roberts), wants her son to have all the advantages of a classic education, something she always longed for but never had. And sad loner Graham (Andrew Turner) drives a night taxi from destination to destination, desperately searching for missing connections. As for Bex (Simone Saunders)… ah, now that would be telling.

Co-directed by Kathy Burke and Scott Graham, I Think We Are Alone is more than just a series of monologues and duologues. It’s a splendid example of contemporary theatre, replete with beautifully nuanced acting and Frantic Assembly’s trademark choreographed transitions. A particular nod should be given to Paul Keogan, whose sublime lighting gives the piece a dazzling sheen.

This is thrilling stuff. Miss it and weep.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney