Daniel Francis and Tala Gouveia form the cast of Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, which is the next production in the summer season at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
The Mountaintop won the Olivier Award for best new play in 2010. It is a “heart-breaking, powerful and surprisingly humorous re-imagining” of events in the hours before the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
It is set in a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. With a storm raging outside, a young maid arrives to deliver King’s coffee. As they talk, King is forced to confront his past, his ideals and his hopes for the future. But who is the mysterious young woman and what is the true purpose of her visit?
Daniel Francis plays King. He was the second merchant in the Royal Shakespeare Company tour of A Comedy of Errors in 2007 and played three minor roles in Twelfth Night for the RSC in the same year.
He played Oluwale in Oladipo Agboluaje’s adaptation of Kester Aspden’s The Hounding of David Oluwale for Eclipse Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2009. In 2012, he was Black in Nathaniel Martello-White’s Blackta in the Young Vic’s Maria Studio.
Tala Gouveia appeared in Ben Power’s adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Husbands & Sons at the National Theatre in 2015 and played Julie in the New Vic’s 2016 production of Victoria Wood’s Talent.
Directed by Abbey Wright, The Mountaintop runs at the Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round from Friday 10 until Saturday 25 June.