The decade of the ‘60s was one of the most tumultuous in the modern history of the United States – Vietnam; activism for civil, women’s, and gay rights; music and pop culture appropriated by youth; hippiedom and the Summer of Love.  It was also the season of assassination, with four noted national leaders, led by President John F. Kennedy, dying from gunfire.  The great civil rights martyr, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose influence continues unabated after his death, was also among them.  Not only is MLK memorialized by a federal holiday in his name, but multitudinous cities have streets honoring his name, including the location of this production on MLK Jr. Way in Oakland.

The image that public figures of all types present is often carefully curated and may be at variance with their private personas.  Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Katori Hall explores that contrast in her magnificent two-hander The Mountaintop.  Oakland Theater Project presents a stunning production of the play co-directed by James Mercer II and Michael Socrates Moran with non plus ultra performances from two of the Bay Area’s finest actors, William Hodgson and Sam Jackson. 

The playwright’s conceit is a fictionalization of 90 minutes of King’s life on April 3, 1968. the night before his murder on the balcony of Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  Alone in his room on a rainy night, he orders a cup of coffee, which is delivered by a beautiful, sexy, sassy young black maid called Camae.  The perennially lonely King asks her to keep him company for a while, and he soon finds that her insights and verbal expression belie her employment and presumed education.

To MLK’s surprise, Camae reveals detailed knowledge of him, including his dalliances, though he is also shown having a warm phone conversation with his family.  When King repeatedly asks how Camae could know such things, her response is always that “Negro talk is faster than lightning.”  But when she inadvertently calls him Michael, his birth name, he becomes suspicious.  Is this a set up?  Is he dreaming?  Indeed, the narrative does a splendid job of balancing comedy, drama, and fantasy.

William Hodgson captures King’s persona from an appropriate look to his ambiguities and contradictions.  King’s gravitas is largely held in reserve, while Hodgson explores his struggles.  He is earnest and emotional.  One of history’s truly courageous and committed individuals, having delivered ringing speeches and sermons with exemplary confidence and dignity, in private, he is sometimes depicted as frozen by paranoia.  Hodgson feverishly overturns chairs and tables looking for electronic bugs.

Frequent thunder triggers heart palpitations as if it were bullets.  In the real world, though he died at age 39, MLK’s autopsy specified that his heart was that of a 60-year-old, suggesting that stress had taken its toll.

Hodgson’s King maintains a superior but warm relationship with Camae, being flirtatious and even making advances that are interrupted by thunder.  Yet we are led to feel that his intentions are playful rather than adulterous.  His conversation with her is both personal and of national issues.

Of course, the weighty focus is on race relations and the challenges of interacting with the white race whose cooperation is needed to overcome discrimination, but who collectively have been contemptible and criminal in their behavior.  King respects her comments, asking what she would say in his place in a coming speech, which is suggestive of the notion that anyone can have the acumen to discern problems and envision solutions.  Yet they differ on fundamental philosophy with her arguing that “to speak by love is to die by hate” while he practices passive resistance and insists that “to live by the sword is to die by the sword.”  In her other departure from his beliefs, Camae’s God is a black woman.

Meanwhile, Sam Jackson as Camae devours the role with gusto.  She postures and sashays and smiles with a come-hither look and repeatedly puts King off kilter.  Jackson relishes delivering the irreverent, combative, foul-mouthed repartee, with an occasional innocent-looking-and-sounding apology.  She is also demeaningly blunt with him about his feet smelling from so many long marches and his even having body odor.

MLK presciently reflects on his own mortality and wonders if he has done the right things in life and if he has done enough.  We can all ask ourselves those questions and answer them by action.  As Dr. King said, “Pick up the baton.”

The Mountaintop, written by Katori Hall, is produced by Oakland Theater Project and is performed on its stage at FLAX art & design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, CA through February 15, 2026.