David Harewood Channels MLK in The Mountaintop

Black plays are all too rare on London's West End, where the late August Wilson has only ever been represented once (with a flop production of Fences, starring Yaphet Kotto). So the presence of American dramatist Katori Hall's The Mountaintop on the Trafalgar Studios mainstage is something to cheer. The 85-minute two-hander takes place in a Memphis hotel room on the eve of the death of Martin Luther King in April 1968. In the play, David Harewood's explosively acted King is joined by the lively Lorraine Burroughs as a maid, Camae, who is not remotely what she at first seems. The play, and James Dacre's production of it, are being talked up for New York, where the 43-year-old Harewood has previously appeared as Othello at BAM and, at the Public Theater, as Shakespeare's Antony in an Antony and Cleopatra, directed by and starring Vanessa Redgrave. He also did a stint at St Ann's Warehouse in Woyzeck. The deep-voiced, powerfully built actor spoke to Broadway.com one recent afternoon about portraying an icon, settling down as a husband and father and a play he clearly holds dear to his heart.  

This must be such an astonishing part for you to play.
I'm very proud of it. This play pushes all my buttons: as a black man and just as a man and a father. We in Britain have grown up with so much American culture and for young blacks here a lot of our main source of cultural identity comes from America. Particularly politically, I think, America has left a mark on us because we haven't had that kind of cultural explosion here. We haven't carved out a black British identity in the way that you did in the U.S. So that leaves many of us feeling a little lost, whereas with American history it all feels immediate and quite close. 

How astonishing, then, to find so fully American a play—and a black American play at that—on a West End stage directed and acted by Brits.
Well, I'm told that Katori [Hall, the writer] actually had the play rejected by several theaters in America who said, "How dare you write this play?" She had people walk off the project and directors say, "You shouldn't be writing this play: this man is sacrosanct, a saint, how dare you have him cursing!" among other things. It's extraordinary how people have been too close to the memory of the legacy of King to think about going there. I read the whole thing on my iPhone and got to the end and said, “I want to do this!” I don't care that it's on the fringe [the play started at a tiny venue in south London's Battersea before transferring to the Trafalgar mid-July] for not very much money and that I don't know who the director is. 

Something about it must be working: At the performance I attended, a mostly full house was on its feet at the end, which you don't often see in England, as you know.
Oh yeah, it's been a joy to find hard and dry English audiences really responding to this [laughs] and that it is attracting a properly diverse audience. The thing about it is that you have two people on stage giving 110% to a hugely entertaining piece that begins in a pretty conventional hotel room with room service and then you get dragged into this magical realism that is so far removed from what you think something like this might be: preachy and worthy or whatever. 

It's very different from King, the 1990 West End musical.
Ha! I was in King, actually. I played one of his aides. I was really disappointed in it; it just didn't work for so many reasons. I was about two or three years out of drama school at the time, and here they were bringing to life this great American hero and it just wasn't working and it was all terribly sad. Here was this musical about a Southern Baptist minister and everyone was saying, "Where's the gospel? Where's the music?" It was all so operatic. Eventually with hours to go before the first night, they finally relented and came back with some music and said, "Basses you sing this; sopranos you sing that." We were clapping and singing and it was like being in church. 

Do you think you resemble Martin Luther King?
I'm taller than he was and lighter: by the time of Memphis he was quite overweight and not very well, so I try and make myself appear heavier-set. But the fact is, I don't really look anything like him though every now and again I can sound like him. But, you know, I just played Nelson Mandela in a film [co-starring Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo as Winnie and as yet unreleased], and, I mean, if I could manage to turn myself into Mandela, I felt I could bend myself into King. I wasn't too afraid of playing the man himself, though if the material wasn't good, I don't think I would have done it. Now, I have to say, I'm very proud of it and very proud that many Americans have been surprised to find that we're English. 

What's wonderful is the play's lack of piety, even as it honors not just King but the movement he made possible leading directly, of course, to Barack Obama today.
The play is wonderfully irreverent in places, and I think there was a fair amount of anxiety to start with about how all that would go down. And it isn't pious at all: it keeps poking fun at itself and its subject so that by the end, you have even more love for the man himself and for his legacy. I think in a way you come away more amazed by the fact that King did what he did despite his level of fear and the fact that he doubted himself. I think the play's very honest in that way. Before the magical realism slips in, you can see members of the audience with their arms folded, tutting and going, "They're poking fun at my hero." And by the end, they're on their feet applauding. The flip in the play genuinely takes people by surprise [Ed's note: and will not be revealed here!] 

This must also be a wonderful ticket for you in career terms.
Absolutely, especially if the play does go to America, and if Lorraine and I go with it. I really like America and should have gone there years ago, but it's always about getting a foot in the door, isn't it? Once I get that foot in, hopefully there will be enough else about me for people to keep that door open. 

Well, you did get to play Antony opposite none other than Vanessa Redgrave. That's pretty considerable.
Yes, it was truly amazing, but looking back on it, I think my agent at the time was very old school. She was one of those people who would always say, "Theater! Do good theater—get your training and then the rest will follow," whereas my contemporaries at the time were like, "Fuck this, let's go to America!" [Laughs] Now I want to join the party. I really, really do.

 Still, your career, I imagine, has been quite happily full of the unexpected.
Especially the way that I was always messing around at school! Weirdly, the first part I ever did in the school play was a section of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech when I was 13, and there were a few black women in the audience going, "Yes, sir!" But my father was a long-distance lorry driver and my mother was in catering. There were very few black actors at all in England on television, so when I went to drama school, the whole journey was amazing for me. On the first day, they were talking about Brecht and Moliere and Dostoevsky and asking me what I think of Moliere and I'd never heard of him. I had only ever read three plays! 

So what's next for you when the run finishes?
I'm unemployed [laughs] though I've now got an American agent and my American manager just sent me through a film script. As always with this business, you never know: the idea of putting myself out there to play a robot who's actually a cop on the trail of a bad guy after playing King is going to be quite dispiriting.

You're making that role up, I hope!
[Laughs] Yes, I am, but it's not that different from a lot of what is out there. King is such a great role that it's kind of as good as it gets. But, you know, I've got a family now—a wife, Kirsty, and two kids, age three and six, and I find that very grounding. As a single man, I really lost my way: after I made some money and shagged a lot of women, I kind of lost my sense of direction and didn't know what else I was going to do. 

So this role means an enormous amount to you.
I want to walk out there and not let the man down.