The Mountaintop at Trafalgar Studios

Most writers wouldn’t use the assassination of Martin Luther King as material for a supernatural romcom but most writers aren’t as brilliant as Katori Hall.

The Mountaintop, playing at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios, opens on the night of April 3, 1968, in a dingy Memphis hotel room.

Dr King’s tremulous baritone – perfectly and consistently captured by David Harewood – is trying to order a coffee from room service.  The civil rights campaigner is exhausted after giving a speech in favour of sanitation workers and is irritably waiting for ‘Ray’ to deliver him a pack of Pall Malls so that he can put in another late night of speech-writing.

Enter Camae, a beautiful firecracker of a maid who knows all about the male libido yet takes it in her stride. After catching the legendary Dr King staring at her assets, she says, ‘you’re jussa man. If I was a man I’d be staring at me too!’

But there’s more to this character – played with energy and poise by the enthralling Lorraine Burroughs – than a caged bird singing. She has ideas about what King should put in his speeches and, at one point, dons his shoes and jacket to orate from on top of one of the motel’s stiff-looking beds. Asked what he thinks, MLK responds, ‘good but not as good as one of mine.’

The hilarity of seeing one of the most historically-significant men of our time bantering, in a not always humble fashion, is one of the strongest elements of the script. Hall manages to weave weary idealist, pompous activist and revitalised flirt with flawless ease.

The significance of the date hangs in the air and as you’re wondering whether all this lightness is just to make the fall hurt more, there is a twist; a twist so daring, so dramatic, so hilariously improbable that somehow the last few hours of Dr King’s life take on the atmosphere of a farce.

The one criticism you could level at this production is that we have to come to expect a little education with our historical plays and – bar the informative nods that place us in a specific time – this is pure surrealism. What is real is the quality of the two central performances which are so hot that audience members in the front row may blister.

And despite the impish fantasy, The Mountaintop has its heart in the right place and once you strip away the seedy maleness, the gender wars and the magical realism, you still have a respectful portrait of a great man. It’s just that this time round, he’s starring in a comedy not a tragedy. Imagine that.

The Mountaintop is running until Saturday 5 September at:

Trafalgar Studios
14 Whitehall
Charing Cross
SW1A 2DY

Box office: 0870 060 6632