At the top of the mountain | Martin Luther King: the man before the myth

On April 4, 1968, America lost one of its most important civil rights activists, Martin Luther King Jr, assassinated on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The room At the top of the mountainpresented at Duceppe, imagines the last night of the man who marked the world with his verve and the strength of his convictions.

Stephanie Morin
The Press

However, more than the myth, it is the man who is at the heart of the play written by the African-American author Katori Hall and translated here by Edith Kabuya. In this play directed by Catherine Vidal, Didier Lucien indeed embodies a Martin Luther King Jr filled with doubts. In the privacy of his motel room, his mind is torn between the next speech to be written to inflame the crowds and more trivial matters, such as the smell of his feet and the inelegance of his mustache…

As we can see, the playwright portrays the militant in a way that could not be more human: a heavy coffee drinker and compulsive smoker, this being of flesh and blood does not hesitate to flirt when a beautiful woman makes her entrance.

It is also in the company of one of them that the pastor will spend his last evening. Camae, a maid full of glibness, will come to upset the civil rights leader even in his deepest convictions.

In the role of this hurricane woman capable of standing up to the greatest, Sharon James offers a very solid performance. Sometimes proud and full of arrogance, sometimes shouting out loud the rage that seizes her, the one she embodies is the real driving force behind the plot. The actress draws on all these registers with grace. She is undoubtedly the revelation of this show.

At his side, Didier Lucien must deal with a less flamboyant role, but much more historically charged. Embodying a mythical character like Martin Luther King Jr is not an easy task and the actor pulls it off successfully. He managed to channel his still very intense energy to deliver a nuanced performance, especially when the pastor steps down from his pulpit to become a mere mortal again. The preaching scenes are less convincing, however, especially when the actor speaks directly to the audience.

The public kept at a distance

The scenography also keeps the audience away from the emotions of the protagonists. The director Catherine Vidal chose to insert room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in a capsule which reduces the stage space. The idea is beautiful (the decor is splendid, even), but the result left us wanting more. This intimate play for two actors would no doubt have been better served by closer proximity to the audience.

Note, however, that if the soul of the viewer is not touched as one might hope, humor, he carves out a nice place in this production. Because yes, we often laugh in this room, despite the subject which could seem heavy. Playwright Katori Hall has imagined a final evening for Martin Luther King Jr that is anything but mortuary.

Only, his text suffers from a certain slowdown halfway through before regaining composure in a well-crafted finale which sadly reminds us that since the death of Martin Luther King Jr, racial inequalities are far from having ceased…