Stories beyond the script: What makes a moral leader? Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop

The story begins with a storm. A dingy motel room, and a door that swings open to reveal a man. The opening tableau of Katori’s Hall’s breakthrough play The Mountaintop is a striking theatrical image – reminiscent of Willy Loman’s entrance in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. MLK is portrayed as a pained everyman, slouching for comfort from a tempest world. And, in the last hours of his life, he is a man full of pain.  Set in the hours after his final speech, punctuated by the immortal line ‘I’ve been to the Mountaintop’, the play is an irresistibly entertaining and deeply moving meditation on what King referred to as ‘The quest for peace and justice’, what it costs and what it takes. The dialogue is delightful, sometimes devastating, and between the civil rights icon and a charming maid named Camae. Through it, Hall keeps raising the question: what makes a moral leader?

Camae’s surprise appearance sets off a kinetic current. In the conversation between the two, they joke, they argue over differing approaches to civil rights, they get angry, they fight, and Camae is revealed to be an angel, sent to take him peacefully away. Surface level, this is a rosy and buoyant depiction, and, in some ways, it is. King and Camae chatting about how to smoke Pall Malls and whether he should shave off his mustache makes King sound like a glowing and jovial saint. This is deception. The first half is not only a conversation between the two, but also a not-so-subtle flirtation. An audience may even be taken aback by this, considering that moments before King was calling his wife, Corretta, and wishing his children goodnight for what will be the last time.

The narrative of King and Camae may be a meditation on King’s radical ideals, but the finale of Camae’s charged monologue and King’s heartfelt response to a beautiful and ugly future, are a call to action.

The southern Reverend is depicted as vain, stubborn and, above all, paranoid. The lightning strikes from outside make him shiver and he nearly throws out Camae, thinking she’s a honeytrap sent to ruin his reputation and tempt him. Camae ironically tests King’s Baptist beliefs, pointing out his hypocrisies and railing against his polite language. These religious undercurrents, as well as the historical backdrop provides the simple text with an epic quality. In the turbulent year of 68’, MLK is ‘the most dangerous man in America’. The storm that King is so afraid of is symbolic of a wider storm enveloping the nation. Hall presents King at his most burdened and at his most human. When Camae puts on King’s jacket and shoes and sparks into an impromptu, fiery sermon she reflects the inner turmoil that he feels but cannot express. The power of this play is contained in Camae as a spiritual loudspeaker, for a leader who can’t make any wrong steps. She shouts, ‘I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired’ and King responds in kind. An authentic lyricism is the result, as Hall brings the high figure of history to his ordinary roots through a few cigarettes and a cup of coffee.

Hoping to initiate the Poor People’s Campaign and deliver a final sermon entitled ‘Why America is going to Hell’, King pleads to the heavens for a little more time. Camae tells him no, that she needs to take him now ‘to the Mountaintop’. Hall pushes to new heights in this final scene. The back and forth between the two characters ends but the play does not. King’s last request is a bare glimpse into the future, and in a rapid-fire spoken word monologue, she lets him see it. Camae’s concluding verse is potent and visceral. The repeated phrase ‘the baton passes on’ strikes at the audience. She flies across the next 56 years of struggles and miracles. The narrative of King and Camae may be a meditation on King’s radical ideals, but the finale of Camae’s charged monologue and King’s heartfelt response to a beautiful and ugly future, are a call to action. Stressing moral courage, repeating as King would in his speeches and sermons that single transferable idea, Hall ends her play on a suitable crescendo.

Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop gives us an accurate portrayal of the man of history, but the play’s language and story holds the ethical weight that King held in his words and actions.

So often there are misconceptions or even falsehoods in artistic depiction of leaders like King. Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop gives us an accurate portrayal of the man of history, but the play’s language and story holds the ethical weight that King held in his words and actions. Before she takes him to the other side, Camae admires King saying, ‘You have the strength to love those who could never love you back.’  In a simple line, Hall captures a grander truth. By showing us the last moments of a moral leader’s life, Hall provides a brief insight into what made an ordinary person commit himself to such an extraordinary task. The play closes on another storm, and in that storm, King repeats the dream he holds. ‘The baton may have been dropped. But anyone can pick it back up.’