It\u2019s the night before his assassination, but that\u2019s hours ahead.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, though, there\u2019s the sound of a man doing his business, then the sound of a toilet flushing. But the audience never hears water running in the sink. MLK Jr., one of our nation\u2019s most esteemed civil rights leaders, didn\u2019t wash his hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about that for an hour. You obsess,\u201d said Davis, describing the rehearsal process for the Arden Theatre Company<\/a> production of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall\u2019s<\/a> work. The show runs through Dec. 14.<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Mountaintop,\u201d on the last night of his life, King is yearning for some rest, some inspiration, and a few Pall Mall cigarettes, when he receives a mysterious visitor in the guise of a motel maid, sassily played by Kishia Nixon.<\/a> She brings coffee, a flask of whiskey, and raises questions, both for King and for the audience.<\/p>\n Questions of legacy. Questions of humanity. Questions of ambition and of human frailty. Is King really as perfect as history paints him? Or even more so?<\/p>\n Of course, a play isn\u2019t a question-and-answer session, with multiple choices. A story needs to unfold, detail by detail. And so, in this play, the toilet flushes and \u2026<\/p>\n Davis describes that moment as an attempt, early in the play, \u201cto pull King off his perfect pedestal in small, little ways, to show him as \u2018a normal every-day citizen,\u2019 \u201d full of flaws, yet full of greatness.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say it bugged me because I\u2019m always about not the \u2018what,\u2019 but the \u2018why,\u2019\u201d Davis said. \u201cIt would have bugged me if I thought it was egregious. But, whether she did it on purpose or not, it plays well to the troubling of his perfect persona.\u201d<\/p>\n A few days after the opening, Davis said he noticed that the prop designer left a towel near the bathroom door, so he started wiping his hands in that scene. \u201cYou look for little things to keep your imagination buzzing.\u201d<\/p>\n At first, Hall\u2019s play couldn\u2019t get any traction in the U.S. Only after it sold out in London in 2009 did American theaters sign on. Opening on Broadway in 2011, with Samuel L. Jackson as King and Angela Bassett as the maid, it immediately sparked controversy over its depiction of King.<\/p>\n Would audiences appreciate anything other than complete sainthood from a man held in the highest esteem, someone akin to Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, two examples that Davis gave?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m uninterested in the notion of a perfect person because I can\u2019t relate to a perfect person,\u201d Davis said. \u201cI love to read about the fallible parts of great people because I want to know what their weaknesses were and what they did to overcome them.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis said he is interested in the \u201ctension in their lives between the public and private personas of successful people. This play does the work that this man was not perfect, but look at how great he actually is, because his heart was that big.\u201d<\/p>\n All of those tensions are evident in \u201cThe Mountaintop.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s ambition and King\u2019s mixture of pride and belief that only he has the ability to lead the movement. What will be his legacy? There\u2019s a man who loves his wife and children, but doesn\u2019t mind a little love on the side. He\u2019s a preacher, but curses like a sailor and enjoys his whiskey.<\/p>\n King\u2019s actions, leadership and inspiration are important \u2014 for the trash collectors on strike in Memphis and for people everywhere struggling for their civil rights. He knows that, yet, honestly, he\u2019s just so tired.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t want his infidelity to become something that tortured his family, that risked the credibility of his own faith walk, which was the foundation of the credibility of the civil rights movement,\u201d Davis said. \u201cHe was making himself susceptible to ruining the things that meant the most to him.<\/p>\n \u201cMLK gets celebrated and Malcolm X was denigrated because Malcolm X presented in a more threatening way,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThere\u2019s always a reckoning in how Black folks get spoken about.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get MLK Jr., you get a man who was the perfect radical. He believed in civil disobedience. He lived the creed of civil disobedience, but he did it aligned with conservative Christian views, demanding that America live up to the ideals that it was founded upon.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get to a status like that, you want to protect it. He paid for it. He was all about \u2018Love thy neighbor\u2019 and nonviolence, yet they put a bullet in his neck.\u201d<\/p>\n Road trip<\/p>\n Shortly before rehearsals began, Davis and his family took a road trip to Memphis to see the Lorraine Motel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took me going to the place to appreciate that MLK got arrested more than anyone you know. He got attacked and accosted more than anyone you know,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThere\u2019s the neutered idea of nonviolence \u2014 soft, safe, saintly. And he was not. He was a radical by definition and he troubled the waters by definition.\u201d<\/p>\n But in \u201cThe Mountaintop,\u201d on his final night in the Lorraine Motel, King was just plain-old tired, with stinky feet, and feeling more than a little grumpy.<\/p>\n The very first moments of the play are in the dark. With his back to the audience, King\/Davis opens his motel room door onto the balcony and shouts for his friend, civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy,<\/a> \u00a0to bring him some cigarettes.<\/p>\n For Davis, it\u2019s a moment to recalibrate. Instead of performing with 400 audience eyes on him, Davis draws them into King\u2019s world. \u201cIt\u2019s super-relaxing to start a show that feels like I\u2019m winding down instead of ramping up,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n Some things to notice:<\/p>\n Listen for the difference between Davis speaking as a regular man and Davis speaking in the preacherly voice we\u2019ve all come to recognize as Dr. King\u2019s. Hall differentiates the two voices in the script. When Davis is supposed to sound like the public preacher, the script reads: King (King Voice).<\/p>\n Pay attention to the phone call that King has with God.<\/p>\n \u201cPhone conversations are an incredible task,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThe conversation with God is nearly two pages long and is different from a monologue or a soliloquy. In a monologue you are speaking to someone, but in soliloquy you are out to talk to the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut there is no one on the other line. I\u2019m just holding a prop phone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n During rehearsals, he and director Brett Ashley Robinson<\/a> began to write what God might be saying on His (or Her) end. \u201cYou have to crystallize what you hear so you can respond,\u201d he said. \u201cI wrote a few notes in between the text to indicate that God is speaking \u2026 ellipses here and a dash there.<\/p>\n \u201cGod is a bit tricky. God is a bit strict, but also is fun in ways. That\u2019s a bit of the lesson that Martin gets in this play. You take yourself too seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n But Davis did take playing the role seriously, excited, but not overwhelmed by the fame of his character. \u201cYou\u2019re asking a mountain climber what he thinks about Everest,\u201d Davis laughed. \u201cLet me at it.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n FYI<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mountaintop,<\/a> through Dec. 14, Arden Theatre Co.<\/a>, 40 N. 2d St., Phila. 215-922-1122. Playing Dec. 3 through Jan. 25, \u201cA Wrinkle in Time\u201d<\/a> from Arden\u2019s Children\u2019s Theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a small thing, really, but details matter. Just minutes after \u201cThe Mountaintop\u201d begins, Akeem Davis, playing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22591,4877,22592,69,71,70,1483],"class_list":["post-36649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arden-theatre","tag-arts","tag-performing-arts","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/MOUNTAINTOP_02.jpg\")
Kishia Nixon (Camae) and Akeem Davis (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) in Arden Theatre Company\u2019s production of \u201cThe Mountaintop.\u201d (Photo courtesy of Ashley Smith, Wide Eyed Studios)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/MOUNTAINTOP_03.jpg\")
Akeem Davis plays Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Arden Theatre Company\u2019s 2025 production of \u201cThe Mountaintop.\u201d (Photo by Ashley Smith, Wide Eyed Studios)<\/p>\n