Play (2009)
by Katori Hall
Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent
Front Porch Arts Collective
The Modern Theatre, Suffolk University
Washington Street, Boston
September 19 – October 12, 2025
Scenic Design: Ben Lieberson, Lighting Design: Brian Lilienthal, Sound Design: Joshua Jackson, Projections Design: Pamela Hersch
With Dominic Carter (Martin Luther King, Jr.), Kiera Prusmack (Camae)
in “The Mountaintop”
Photo: Courtesy of Front Porch Arts Collective
It is April 3, 1968 and Martin Luther King Jr. (Dominic Carter) is in Memphis and staying at the Lorraine Motel, which we know well as the site of his assassination the following day. The play is set the evening before the horrific event and King, having returned to the motel that day from giving the iconic and somewhat foreboding sermon entitled I’ve Been To The Mountaintop, encounters a maid, Camae (Kiera Prusmack), who comes to check in about room service food he has ordered. They engage in banter and things move on from there. Allusion to King’s philandering, conveyed through his playful attempts at seducing Camae, form the initial part of the drama. But there is much more to come. One cannot divulge the main dramatic fulcrum without giving the whole thing away, but check out the spoilers section below if you want a peek.
This ingeniously written play hovers between naturalism and surrealism in order to project its drama, and it does so exceedingly well. We get a strong sense of the ordinariness of the motel and of King’s life on the road, warts and all, but it is all couched in a halo of the unexpected. The result is a sense of the grandeur of the civil rights hero who, despite his very human flaws, was able to rise up among the greats, and beyond.
The production is vividly and interestingly done. As King, Carter does an excellent job of bringing forth both the angel and the man, and as Camae, Prusmack offers a wonderful turn as someone who is both the most down to earth and really out of this world. Overall, the effect is moving and scintillating and director Maurice Emmanuel Parent has done a superb job of rendering playwright Katori Hall’s wonderfully complex and metaphysically nuanced narrative into a moving and vivid experience.
The set by Ben Lieberson is vivid and efficient, supported by effective lighting design by Brian Lilienthal and sound design by Joshua Jackson. Projection design by Pamela Hersch does a wonderful job of evoking the pitched tenor of the times and the shocking tragedy of King’s assassination.
– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)
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