The Mountaintop

 Curve, Leicester

25^th September, 2024

“I’m just a man”

Katori Hall often uses her home of Memphis as a setting for her plays. In Hurt Village (2012), she explores multi-generational experiences of displacement and isolation in an area of drugs, poverty and crime in the city. In her Pulitzer Prize winning The Hot Wing King (2020), which finished its run at the National earlier this month, a group of men compete for the trophy in a local cooking competition. And she shares her home state with Tina Turner, which surely contributed to her book for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical which plays at Curve next March. In her 2009 Olivier Award winning The Mountaintop, the setting is the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spends his last night. The night before his assassination, the play takes us inside Room 306. After a few flirtatious exchanges with the maid, King is made to confront his work, ideals, past and future in a taut 90 minutes in which Nathan Powell’s production brings out the more poetic moments in the play.

Hall’s text remains a creeping force of nature: at once mundane and extraordinary, a characteristic exemplified in both King and Camae (Justina Kehinde). The opening moments see King order coffee and a pack of his favourite Pall Malls, and take his shoes off to kick back. He repeatedly says ‘I am a man’; and that he is – father, preacher, sinner – but he is also a beacon of light, emblematic of great love and great suffering for generations to come. Thus, Hall’s creation of Camae is a perfect match for a figure as monolithic as King. Camae is an earthy woman with a taste for whisky, cigarettes and sex, yet when she unleashes a torrential hymn-like sermon worthy of the great man himself we sense that not everything is as it seems. Camae, like King, also has a greater purpose. As it becomes clear that Camae has been summoned to the motel room to deliver more than just coffee, we see Hall’s play turn from an intimate reimagining of a conversation in a motel room to something more ethereal.

Powell brings these more abstract moments to the fore. At first, we Lulu Tam’s design take great care to achieve verisimilitude. Her recreation of the motel room has the same specifications: the double beds, the plush yellow carpet, the striped chair, the round coffee table. Even the neon sign (lit by Adam King) for the motel is a near-copy of the one in Memphis. But over time, the set (with the play) opens up to invite us further into King’s internal feelings. It snows in the room, we see grass appear, and even popcorn drops from above at Camae’s demand – a nod perhaps to her more unearthly powers. In Ray Strasser-King’s portrayal of King, we see the man and not just a historical figure. We see him tire with the weight of his toils; we can see the fire that drives his life; we see the holes in his socks and his flaws; and we see his peerless oratory powers with the drawn-out vowels and musical syncopations.

There’s no doubting the power in the play’s final moments. Kehinde leads us through the years following King’s death up to the present day in front of Jack Baxter’s video design. Hall’s text gains a poetry and musicality as we see historic achievements and struggles in equality from 1968 to present day: from ‘If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit’, the AIDS epidemic and 9/11, to Condoleezza Rice and the election of Barack Obama. In 2009, seeing the newly-inaugurated Obama must have given the end of the play a huge sense of hope. Powell draws on struggles in recent British history, including the war in Iraq, a Brexit speech from Nigel Farage, and the 2024 summer riots. The motif ‘The baton passes on’ is repeated. When I last wrote about The Mountaintop in 2018, I compared that line to a line from another great American play, ‘the great work continues’ from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. I can’t help but wonder what progress has been made since 2018, but I guess that’s the nature of the baton… always being passed on.

The Mountaintop plays at Curve, Leicester until 5^th October before visiting MAST Southampton and Theatre Royal, Stratford East. For further information, please visit https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/the-mountaintop-3/

Ray Strasser-King (Dr. Martin Luther King) - Photography by Ellie Kurttz

 

Pretty Woman

 Curve, Leicester

16^th September 2024

“Everyone who comes to Hollywood needs a dream”

Garry Marshall’s 1990 movie made a star of Julia Roberts and was the highest grossing R-rated Disney film until this year. Originally a darker script, J. F. Lawton made it a lighter rom-com when picked up by Disney and Touchstone Pictures. The Disneyfication, as such, of sex workers on the boulevards of Los Angeles was box office gold. Bryan Adams’ and Jim Vallance’s musical adaptation had a short run on Broadway in 2018 before opening in London just before the pandemic. As the show nears the end of its UK tour (its last stop is in Sheffield next week), the musical, as light and bubbly as the hotel suite’s champagne, appears to be a hit with UK audiences as much as the film.

A big (huge) part of that is because the intellectual property of its origins is well-known and popular. Wealthy businessman Edward Lewis (Oliver Savile, in fine voice) picks up Vivian (Amber Davies) who’s walking the streets of Hollywood. Their meet cute is over her fascination of his posh car and his for her hourly rate. Out of loneliness or sheer curiosity, he takes her back to his suite in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and offers her $3000 in exchange for her company for the week. Despite (perhaps because of) the foundations on which their relationship is built, this twist on the Pygmalion tale easily has the audience rooting for them as a couple. Savile and Davies’ chemistry really connected with the audience last night and even though we may have misgivings about both characters’ decisions, this is frothy rom-com territory delivered well. The problem is that the musical steers so close to the source material it’s practically chained to it – the plot, much of its dialogue and even some of Tom Rogers’ costumes are recognisable from the film. Lawton’s screenplay is the basis for the show’s book by him and Marshall. It may give audiences some reassurance that it’s simply the movie live on stage, but I would argue that it doesn’t add anything new or provide much depth to what we already know.

Other than Roy Orbison and Bill Dees’ title song, which makes an appearance at the curtain call, it’s pleasing to say the rest of the show’s score is new. Adams’ and Vallance’s music is largely pop-rock with a mixture of upbeat and ballad numbers. I particularly liked their interest in Hollywood. A character called Happy Man, who sells maps to homes of the stars, sings numbers like ‘Welcome to Hollywood’ and ‘Never Give Up on a Dream’ which provide a thread for the musical’s setting. It’s in these upbeat songs that Adams and Vallance scratch away at the idea of Hollywood being a place of ambition and dreams but also of unhappiness; a place people escape to and also want to escape. That idea is enhanced in Vivian’s ballad ‘Anywhere but Here’ (the title speaks for itself) and Edward’s song ‘Freedom’ (one of the more memorable songs). The end of Act One number ‘You’re Beautiful’ is a crowd-pleaser in which Vivian fully looks and feels worthy of her surroundings. But other than that, a lot of the other songs are sadly forgettable.

Under Jerry Mitchell’s steady direction, the show has excellent production values. David Rockwell’s design captures the two sides of Hollywood: one with the fire escapes and migraine-inducing neon with an underlying grubbiness, the other the flowing drapes and neo-Renaissance frills of the hotels, theatres and boutiques, all of it framed by starlit palm trees. Also a nice surprise is Ore Oduba in a sort of everyman role as Happy Man, hotel manager, store manager and even conductor, connecting the dots in this dotty town. His performance(s) has enough distinguishing features to separate his various characters, his singing and dancing are solid, and he’s entertaining without being cloying. The role has been made into a vehicle for his talents to a winning effect.

I can see why the show was snubbed at the Tonys and Oliviers but it delivers what it promises. In Savile and Davies’ star performances in particular, Pretty Woman is a heart-warming musical rom-com which steers away from the darkness.

Pretty Woman plays at Curve Leicester until 21^st September as part of its UK tour. For further information please visit https://uk.prettywomanthemusical.com/

The company of Pretty Woman. Credit: Marc Brenner