- September 20, 2024
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Phillipa Rose and Brent Jordan star in the City Repertory Theatre's production of “The Mountaintop.” Courtesy photo by Mike Kitaif. Graphic design by Angela Young.
Brent Jordan and Phillipa Rose star in the City Repertory Theatre's production of “The Mountaintop.” Courtesy photo by Mike Kitaif. Graphic design by Angela Young.
By the time Phillipa Rose brought the play, “The Mountaintop,” to City Repertory Theatre artistic director John Sbordone, CRT already had a full 2021-22 season lined up.
But Sbordone couldn’t turn it down.
“It’s really a very special play, very wonderfully written,” Sbordone said.
Katori Hall’s play is a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night on Earth.
CRT’s production is playing one weekend only: Thursday, Feb. 17 through Sunday, Feb. 19.
“We added it early, but we didn’t start listing it until after we opened the season,” said Sbordone, who is directing the play. “We try not to do what other people do. So, when this came up, it was exciting.”
After CRT presented “The Crucible” last spring, Rose said she and other cast members discussed inclusivity in theater and roles for people of color. That led her to do some research and she stumbled on a video of the Broadway production of “The Mountaintop,” starring Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson.
“I just kind of fell in love with it,” Rose said. “There is a lot of depth to it and things that were not only relevant in that time period but definitely relevant today. I think that for me personally, it is also really great to have a role that is culturally made for me. So that's another aspect that really kind of brought me to the show.”
The play takes place in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968, the night before King was assassinated on the motel’s balcony. King was in Memphis to support the city’s sanitation workers’ strike and delivered his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
Brent Jordan plays King in CRT’s production. Rose plays a maid named Camae, a fictional character.
“She is the maid, but she’s more than that. She’s not really what she seems,” Rose said.
The idea of playing King was daunting at first for the 31-year-old Jordan.
“When John asked me to take the role, I was intimidated,” he said. “But upon reading the material and digesting it, I found out that it wasn't something to be intimidated about, because I wasn't trying to portray the idol in people's heads. It’s really trying to find the man behind that.”
“I just kind of fell in love with (the show). There is a lot of depth to it and things that were not only relevant in that time period but definitely relevant today.
PHILLIPA ROSE
The play portrays the civil rights leader as a human being, “warts and all,” as Hall has stated.
“It shows an aspect of Martin Luther King we don't often see — his private side,” Sbordone said.
The play deals with the most serious of subjects but also has a lot of humor, and Sbordone said he is curious to see how the audience deals with that.
“It’s like Shakespeare, where people think you’ve got to be serious,” he said. “And some people may approach it that way and be reluctant to laugh. But we will fix that.”
