The Life and Death of Martin Luther King
by Paul Stebbings
Golden Goose, 2-5 January 2025
Star rating: 4
This intense and imaginative play does exactly what its title claims. Using five accomplished actors, it tells the story of Luther King from the time of the bus boycott in Alabama in 1955 to his assassination in Memphis in 1968, at the age of 39.
Adrian Decosta, who also directs, is outstanding as King. We see him at home in Montgomery with his young wife and baby – eloquent, idealistic, passionate and well educated. Then comes the birth of the Civil Rights movement bringing with it travel, fame, a Nobel Peace prize, a well developed gift for rhetoric and some sexual corruption. Decosta nails it all – especially that drawling, richly inflected voice. We eventually get a moving, verbatim rendering of the iconic “I have a dream …” speech.
Toara Bankole is a versatile actor with a fine singing voice. She is gentle and caring as King’s wife, pert as the prostitute who serves him in a hotel room and sassily determined as Rosa Parks who famously refused to give seat to a white man on a bus in 1955. Other parts, of which there are a lot, are played by Will Batty (very convincing as broadcaster Jack Nader) Andrew Earl (sinister as Malcom X) and Lincoln James as a no-nonsense Sheriff maintaining Alabama segregation laws.
The production makes good use of symbolism and weaves in some interesting music and fine protest song (music by John Kenny) which makes the piece feel both poignant and plaintive. There’s a scene in which, for example, chains are held across the stage by the whole cast and noisily dropped in rhythm.
Because this play, obviously, features both black and white people, simple half masks in either white or black are used to show when an actor is playing against his or her own ethnicity: the cast actually consists of four black actors and one white. It’s a neat, unfussy, even-handed means of indentification which works pretty well – once I got used to it.
I learned a lot I didn’t previously know about Martin Luther King from this play and found myself checking facts all the way home. Yes, he really was unfaithful to his wife and yes, he was fond of music. Moreover he was initially reluctant to get involved with the bus boycott.
