The Mountaintop Review: Martin Luther King, Not Just Humanized
There is a shocking moment halfway through “The Mountaintop,” the play starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett that imagines the last night that Martin Luther King Jr. is alive. It is a shock that turns this superbly acted, enjoyably written drama into a disappointment.Until then, the King created by playwright Katori Hall in her Broadway debut is shown in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel peeing, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee with whiskey in it, using occasional street language, and eying a pretty woman. We even learn that he has smelly feet. None of this is shocking.
The pretty woman he eyes is the motel maid Camae, on her first day at the job. King has called room service, and when she arrives in the middle of a thunderstorm, he flirts a little. They talk politics a little. We learn what he was doing in Memphis – his efforts on behalf of the striking sanitation workers in the city.
But then suddenly, the playwright introduces a twist that changes “The Mountaintop” from a biographical drama into the realm of the supernatural.
Now, the depiction of King in popular entertainment has always presented something of a problem. There have been a number of attempts. A 1978 miniseries “King: The Martin Luther King Story” starred Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson. Billy Dee Williams played King on Broadway in the 1976 “I Have A Dream,” which lasted 88 performances In my review of that last play, I tried to get at the crux of the problem by asking: Should Martin Luther King be humanized? I argued that the effort to show King’s human flaws holds the danger of simultaneously trivializing and lionizing a man who often said “it’s the foot soldiers that win the war, not the generals.” Yet the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement are remembered, if at all, in the abstract. It is King Day, not Civil Rights Day, that’s a national holiday.
Martin L Craig - News
Martin Luther King Story” starred Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson. Billy Dee Williams played King on Broadway in the 1976 “I Have A Dream,” which lasted 88 performances The Man in Room 306, a one-man show written and performed by Craig Alan Edwards
Jacobs has seen its backlog improved recently and in July President and Chief Executive Craig L. Martin said the company's outlook remained positive as he also noted its solid prospect list and strong fiscal third-quarter performance.
Occupy DC protesters also joined the event as they headed toward the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. (Oct. 15) By Susan Svrluga and Bill Turque, Valerie Green-Thomas sees them every day in her classes at the Bronx middle school where she is a special
Greg D. Martin, 24, of the 800 block of South 22nd Street, was arrested at 3:15 am Thursday on a charge of resisting, obstructing or disarming a peace officer. Bond was set at $1000. Craig L. Gladney, 43, of the 800 block of South 21st Street,
Pall Corporation (NYSE:PLL) today announced that B. Craig Owens has been nominated to serve on the company's board of directors. Mr. Owens will stand for election by Pall shareholders in December 2011. He is replacing Dr. Edwin W. Martin,
Richard Dawkins responds to Craig's debate challenge in a UK ...
Atheist Richard Dawkins explained why he would not debate Craig in this column Guardian. This is the last excuse not to debate Craig, (see complete list of excuses here.) I guess this is how to strike without giving Dawkins Craig Craig a chance to respond. If he wanted to hear an answer, he would have attended the debate in Oxford, and to put its case on the table to reply.
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond decent contemplation.During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are eaten alive, many others running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If ever there is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
(“God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American Most churchmen these days wisely disown the horrific genocides ordered by the God of the Old Testament.Anyone who criticizes the bloodlust God is very unjustly accused of ignoring the historical context, and to naive literalism that was never more than metaphor or myth. You look far to find a preacher modern, ready to defend God's command in Deuteronomy 20: 13-15, to kill all the men in a conquered city and seize women, children and cattle as booty.
@ Craig whyte is "suing" the BBC .... is that like Martin Bain "suing" over the L'equipe story?
It's Martin day and Larry says come on down, FREE acoustic guitar restring until 3:00 and Craig plays at 6:00.... 