THE MOUNTAINTOP

Royal Lyceum Theatre

★★★★

“a powerful play with a satisfying, if unrealistic, ending”

Katori Hall’s award winning play The Mountaintop is a timely revival at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre, as the United States once again faces, in King’s words, “the urgency of the moment.” Directed by Rikki Henry, with Caleb Roberts as Dr Martin Luther King Jr., and Shannon Hayes as Camae, this production delivers a theatrical examination of King’s last night alive in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3rd, 1968. If you’re thinking this will be a naturalistic drama about a charismatic civil rights leader and the forthright maid he encounters when he orders room service, prepare to be surprised.

We encounter Dr King on a night when he is at his physical lowest. He is coughing incessantly, smoking cigarettes that only make things worse, and is increasingly paranoid (with good reason) about the covert surveillance of the FBI on his political activities. Paradoxically, his achievements as a civil rights leader have never been greater. He is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He has already delivered his most iconic speeches, and is in Memphis having delivered yet another historic speech in support of striking sanitation workers. It is in reference to this speech that playwright Katori Hall takes her title The Mountaintop.

The beginning of the drama is naturalistic enough. We see Dr King go through the motions of anyone who finds himself in a motel room, after midnight, with an exhausting work day behind him. Hall presents us with Martin Luther King, Jr. the man, not the legend. A man trying to find a cigarette, and to reach his wife and children with a telephone call. Outside the Lorraine Motel a typical Southern thunderstorm is battering Memphis, to King’s evident discomfort, and even fear. Hall has chosen to present King as vulnerable, afraid, and desperately in need of that cigarette, and a cup of coffee. Salvation arrives in the form of Camae, a pretty and beguilingly outspoken young woman who rescues King with both. From that point on, The Mountaintop is really Camae’s play, as she alternatively flirts, shocks, comforts and drives King into the arms of his eventual destiny. The play parts company with naturalism when, in a totally unexpected jog into surrealism, it transpires that Camae is not just a maid with room service, but an angel of death, preparing King for what awaits him the following day.

In this production, set designer Hyemi Shin has prepared the way for the surrealistic jog. The set is set at an angle, with the boundaries of the room sketched in. There’s something surrealistic about the television set as well—as though it were broadcasting images not of this world. Actors Shannon Hayes and Caleb Roberts have plenty of space to burst through the boundaries of the motel room when the moment arrives, and director Rikki Henry encourages them to be bold in their use of it. The show may begin in a motel room in Memphis, but it ends at an apocalyptic moment in American history, and Hyemi Shin’s costume designs are up to the challenge as well. With powerful composition and sound design by Pippa Murphy, and lighting design by Benny Goodman, we are free to focus on the performances by Hayes and Roberts. Shannon Hayes makes the most of the role of Camae. She is strong, confident and not afraid to challenge Roberts at every turn in the drama. This is essential since though there are surprises throughout the drama, there’s not much that could be called suspenseful. Caleb Roberts is a good foil as Martin Luther King, Jr. He shows the range of the man, with a sensitive performance that includes weaknesses for tobacco and women, and King’s fear of meeting a violent fate before his work in the Civil Rights Movement is complete. While the dramaturgy is uneven at times, it is still a powerful play with a satisfying, if unrealistic, ending.

The Lyceum’s revival is well worth attending. Spend a little time reminding yourself of the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s, and the life and writing of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. before you go. It will make your visit all the more meaningful. Recommended.

THE MOUNTAINTOP

Royal Lyceum Theatre

Reviewed on 4th June 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

Previously reviewed at this venue:

TREASURE ISLAND | ★★★ | November 2024

THE MOUNTAINTOP

★★★★

“a brave and exciting revival that mixes gritty absurdism with precision-cut stylisation and outstanding performances”

When Sophie Treadwell’s “Machinal” premiered in 1928, the New York Times was so intrigued that it reviewed the production twice – calling it ‘a triumph of individual distinction, gleaming with intangible beauty… an illuminating, measured drama such as we are not likely to see again’. The Times described it as a play that ‘in a hundred years… should still be vital and vivid’. Well – here we are, almost a hundred years later and – yes – it is still vital, vivid; and individual. Richard Jones’ revival at The Old Vic will ensure that Treadwell’s legacy will survive another century at the very least.

The play is inspired by (rather than based on) the real-life case of Ruth Snyder who was executed in the electric chair for the murder of her husband. Treadwell’s narrative gives us a fictionalised backstory in nine distinct episodes which describes the chain of events that leads an anonymous woman to her fate. We are shown the different phases of her life and the people she comes into contact with. Rosie Sheehy barely leaves the stage during her extraordinary portrayal of this ordinary woman. A woman who never finds her place. Never finds peace. Driven to eccentricity; disturbed and constrained, but essentially tender and pliable while the life around her is hard and mechanised.

It is a highly impersonal world in which the characters have no names. As a result, they don’t attract much sympathy and while we are drawn into their expressionist world, we are not invited to have any emotional involvement. It is the rhythm of the piece that keeps us going along for the ride. Jones’ direction is as stylish and stylised as the writing, although he is just one cog in the machine. Benjamin Grant’s discordant, staccato soundscape chimes with Adam Silverman’s lighting that both punctuate and underscore the narrative. Sarah Fahie is credited as movement director, but choreographer is a more apt description. Even Hyemi Shin’s mustard-tinged, claustrophobic set seems to have rehearsed its movements in time to the clockwork dialogue and the pulse of the play.

Repetition informs the action, adding to the sense of unease and entrapment our protagonist feels. She quits her humdrum job by marrying the boss – a misogynist who regards his wife as a business acquisition, yet Tim Francis brilliantly manages to find a very likeable eccentricity to an otherwise despicably outdated personality. Unfortunately, she can’t seem to just ‘quit’ her marriage, which eventually leads her to the extreme measures of murder, having bizarrely got the idea from a chance remark made by her lover (Pierro Niel-Mee). The feminist message is somewhat sabotaged along the way. And we never quite understand her detachment, nor indeed her disproportionate, sadistic treatment of her nagging, potato-obsessed mother (a wonderfully colourful and funny Buffy Davis).

Although a few of the scenes are drawn out, the pace never drags. We might not sympathise, but we enjoy the absurdity immensely. It is another world but uncomfortably like our own. Although we can see Kafkaesque influences, it is almost impossible to believe that “Machinal” was written a century ago; and we are also reminded of those that Treadwell has influenced in turn. This is a brave and exciting revival that mixes gritty absurdism with precision-cut stylisation and outstanding performances.

Tag Archives: Hyemi Shin

THE MOUNTAINTOP

★★★★

Royal Lyceum Theatre

THE MOUNTAINTOP

Royal Lyceum Theatre

★★★★

“a powerful play with a satisfying, if unrealistic, ending”