A play for Obama

Is there yet a play for the Obama age?

Perhaps one about Martin Luther King - but not too saintly or solemn.

With a feminist twist - but from a dazzling, black motel maid.

With God on the end of a hot line - but not exactly the George W. Bush kind of God.

Katori Hall is a young black American playwright who spent her childhood a few blocks from the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated in 1968 and has set her play, The Mountaintop, in the room where he spent his last night.

For the maid and the preacher the evening stretches from the demystifying realism of smelly feet and a lost toothbrush to the increasingly surreal exchange of cigarettes, clothing, hidden whisky and the tactics of the struggle for civil rights.

Add in predestination, a pinch of salvation by grace, an angel on her first day in the office - and it is as surreal a ninety minutes of edgy, hopeful magic as any Obamista could wish.

For the coming weeks it's at the Trafalgar Studios, with David Harwood as  King and Lorraine Burrough as the maid Camae, a fascinating treat directed by James Dacre with authoritative care.

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Religion has been a pervasive force in African American communities for a long time. In some of his speeches Barack Obama draws on its cadences. A playwright who can present King, who had a father for a preacher and was steeped in this tradition, on the day of his assassination in a perspective which alters our view of drama and religion deserves our attention. Your comments suggest that Katori Hall may have done so.