The Curious Case of The Mountaintop

By Isaac Butler

So.  According to TCG, the fifth most produced regional play for the 2012-2013 is (or will be) Katori Hall's The Mountaintop. It's not atypical for plays that have been on Broadway and garnered box office success to end up making the regional rounds. One of the other top ten plays is The Motherfucker With the Hat. What I cannot recall, however, is a play that garnered such a cool reception from both critics and awards voters ending up in the list. (Here, for example, isMotherfucker's Stagegrade). 

I was not a fan of The Mountaintop (I saw an earlier workshop of the play with different actors although I'm told the text remained largely the same) and I didn't see Hurt Village. I was living in another state during both productions. I am, however, a fan of Katori Hall in general, both as a human being and as an artist.

Certainly, there are plenty of cases of shows and playwrights that are regularly ignored by New York winding up on the list.  Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon was a regional sensation prior to coming to New York, Steven Dietz is regularly produced everywhere except, it seems, for the isle of Manhattan. But it's an interesting moment, to have this show blowing up regionally despite its reception here. So her seeing more success is, I think, a good thing.

 But I remain befuddled by the play's post-Broadway success. The cynical way to look at is that it is cheap (it's a one-set two hander) and, given the star studded nature of its Broadway cast (which featured Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett) it will have name recognition despite what critics said. 

But there's also another, more hopeful way to think about this.  Perhaps this shows a lessening of Brantley and Isherwood's influence over what regional producers will program.  The running joke about Isherwood, after all, is that as the #2 reviewer at the Times and the one most likely to encounter and review mainstreamish new work, he is the de facto literary manager of American Regional Theater.  But if American Regional Theater is going to be truly regional, which is to say, focused on its region, producing plays that don't have a great pull quote from the Times is important.

Meanwhile, in this profile written by Alexis Soloski, Katori Hall talks about her work's critical reception:

Yet American critics didn’t warm to the play as the English ones had, and it received no Tony nominations. Hall attributes this difference to U.S. attitudes toward King. Americans, she believes, prefer to see King as a saint rather than a man. Her play desires the opposite, as when Camae scents King’s shoes and crows, “Dr. Kang got stanky feet. Oooo! And you got holes in your socks, too?” Besides, says Hall, displaying some of the outspokenness she often reveals in interviews and in her lively Twitter feed, “I think critics tend to be dismissive toward young women writers anyway.”

Certainly, they didn’t react any more kindly to her next play, Hurt Village, which launched her tenure as one of Signature Theatre’s “Residency Five” playwrights, a five-year program that commissions and produces three plays per writer. James Houghton, the artistic director of the Signature, who had seen a workshop of Hurt Village during Hall’s time at Juilliard, calls Hall “fierce” and “fearless” and the play “an incredibly powerful piece of writing.” Set in a derelict housing project slated for demolition, it centers on Cookie, a mouthy, precocious 13-year-old, and the drug-doers, drug dealers and hard-scrabblers who surround her. “Folks round here so po’ we can’t even afford the r at the end,” Cookie tells us.

Only a few critics applauded the production, and several wrote reviews revealing a refusal to engage with the play and its characters. In some ways, Hall seems resigned to such analyses. “I can’t make them learn about being poor and black in Memphis, Tennessee,” she says, even as the play attempts to do just that. But then she adds, rather more darkly, “I must say, those critics do not want to be in a bar with me.”

There are a couple of inaccuracies in this section.  First off, critics did not ding the play for its desire to paint Dr. King as a man rather than a saint.  If anything, the Stagegrade roundup that the article links to leaves the reader with the opposite impression: that critics believed the play to be at times too saccharine and idealized (or to use David Cote's formulation "mawkish" and "triumphalis[t]"). In addition, most critics responded negatively to the production as much as the play, disliking the "miscast" leads (who were both over a decade older than the parts they were playing).  Critical reception of Hurt Village was also significantly better. Critics gave The Mountaintop a C- with the most frequent grade being in the D range, while giving Hurt Village a B, with the B rangealso marking the data set's mode. The reason why "only a few critics" applauded it is that half as many critics reviewed Hurt Village.

  Alexis is right about the lower-end reviews in Hurt Village reflecting a lack of willingness to engage with it.  I did the Stagegrade for that show and came away from those reviews disgusted-- actually revolted-- by some of what I read. For many years here at Parabasis we've advocated for and talked about ways to increase diversity in theater programming.  The trouble some critics have with actually  seeing the work in front of them when they confront cultural difference is a serious barrier to those efforts. 

 

Comments

[Julie]

I think the popularity of this play this season has everything to do with the facts that it's a cheap two-hander (as you already pointed out) and it's about MLK. Because of the latter, and the fact that it was on Broadway starring Sam Jackson and Angela Bassett, it needed zero help from The Times -- but I think despite Brantley's mixed review, he aided and abetted anyway with his declaration that MOUNTAINTOP is "at heart a comfort play, a nursery room fable for grown-ups that seeks to reconcile us with a tragedy that tore the fabric of a nation."

At any rate, I remain befuddled by the show's success as well. I saw it and wrote the StageGrade, and I agree with the play's detractors (mawkish; empty banter). I didn't see HURT VILLAGE, but after going to THE MOUNTAINTOP, I can't believe I missed much.

[Jack Worthing]

Isherwood's grip loosening? Hardly. It's cheap, it's about Dr. King, and it was on in London and New York. The End.

[99]

Julie, you did miss very much. I didn't see The Mountaintop, but I loved loved LOVED HURT VILLAGE.

There may be a piece in this about the influence of the Times on different audiences. Black audiences may not be as influenced by the NY Times theatre section and that helps influence the programming. Plus a lot of audiences may be more receptive to "comfort" plays. I know the play has its detractors, but it does also have its champions. Anecdotally, I know a lot of different people who saw it and loved it very much.

I think the economics are key, as well, but I think Jack is oversimplifying the matter: for regional theatres, THE MOUNTAINTOP scratches a lot of itches (if you start from the premise that theatres are not choosing plays simply on account of quality AND that they're not choosing THE MOUNTAINTOP due to its quality): it's a new play by a female writer of color; it's got black content that's appealing to "traditional" (i.e. older) black audiences, but it's also a bit "edgy," on that front, it's not an August Wilson play and, yes, it's cheaper to produce.

I very, very much agree with you about the lack of diversity in the ranks of critics and how it hurts plays like HURT VILLAGE, which was an exciting, compassionate, lovely play and deserves to have a long life. Of course, it's also a large, ensemble work that requires some very specialized casting (a ten-year old who can rap and drum).

Actually, I think the same can be said The Motherfucker With The Hat. While Guirgis is not exactly a writer of color, his work appeals on many of the same axes. There was a strong current through the NYC theatre community that it was a play mistreated by the critics. (Again, I didn't get a chance to see it.)

Just to cycle back around: sentimentality isn't a flaw, and I don't think it should be. Theatre professionals tend to armor ourselves against it, but audiences don't necessarily do the same.

[talkyintrovert]

I saw both Mountaintop and Hurt Village. I am an African American woman. I agreed with the critics. Both seemed the work of a young promising playwright given a big stage too soon. Motherfucker with the Hat was a good play made mediocre by the casting of Chris Rock--who was game and charming, but miscast.

I agree with Julie's comment. Mountaintop is being done regionally because it is inexpensive to produce and fills the February black history month slot well.

[Mark]

Stephen Adly Guirgis is a writer of color (Egyptian-American). The Motherfucker with the Hat was very well reviewed, especially in a glowing notice from Ben Brantley.

[Julie]

Yes, THE MOUNTAINTOP is a new play by a female writer of color-- but if it's not a good play? What then? Should we produce Hall's work simply because she's an African American playwright with buzz right now? I find that argument troubling.

Sentimentality isn't a flaw, you're right. But it's rarely done well, and in this instance I think the critics are right in seeing THE MOUNTAINTOP's use of it as problematic. (This could lead to a whole other discussion about whether critics should write for the "audience" - whoever that is - or actually write critically. Unlike you, however, everyone I know who saw/read the play was very disappointed.)

Maybe I missed something -- and if so, apparently Mark, above, did as well -- but how was MOTHERFUCKER mistreated by the critics? The critical consensus was an A-.

[99]

Your first argument is by no means at all the argument I'm making. I'm not saying at all Hall's work should be produced because she's black and buzzy. What I'm saying is that what critics and theatre professionals think is a "good" play may not be what audiences respond to. The question of who the critics are writing for (and to) is a good one and worth some discussion. I'm simply raising the question that, in this discussion, the given is that THE MOUNTAINTOP is not a good play and that it's programming is the result of some form of political correctness or marketing concern. Isn't it possible that audiences may be responding to it in a way that critics didn't?

I get it; you didn't like it and didn't think it worked. I still say you missed a great play in HURT VILLAGE.

Mark, fair point on Guirgis, though, to my recollection, he usually doesn't identify as an artist of color himself.

[Julie]

I wasn't disagreeing with you about the fact that audiences may enjoy the sentimentality of THE MOUNTAINTOP; I was simply trying to raise a point about the nature of criticism, albeit slightly off-topic. But I still agree with talkyintrovert that a big reason behind its popularity in the regions is that it "fills the February black history month slot well."

And I get it, too; I apparently missed a great play in HURT VILLAGE.