On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. She was tired of the racist rules that plagued the lives of black people in Montgomery, Alabama. We had already seen her being asked by a driver to enter a different bus by the rear entrance since the front entrance was reserved for whites. As she followed that instruction, the bus drove off without her.
The refusal to give up her seat on that December day resulted in her arrest. By December 4, it had sparked the famous Montgomery bus boycott in protest.
This is an early scene in the riveting account of Martin Luther King’s part in the Civil Rights Movement, taking us from a brief glimpse of him before the boycott that Ralph Abernathy (Andrew Earl) and others persuaded him to lead. The story culminates in his assassination in 1968.
Adrian Decosta gives an impressive performance as King, conjuring up the grand, imposing rhythms and tone of his speeches, some of which he delivers during the performance. They include the inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech from the 1963 March on Washington.
All the actors play multiple parts, sometimes using partial masks for the minor unnamed characters to indicate if their skin is black or white. Toara Bankole skilfully performs all the female parts from King’s wife Coretta to the civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Among the fine cast giving us broad brushstroke characterisations is Will Batty as the fast-talking, probably fictional US journalist Jack Nader, who is positively impressed by King but under pressure from the FBI (Lincoln James) to spy on King.
The first, longer section of the play is uplifting and hopeful. After the interval, the mood changes with Malcolm X’s grim speech reminding us of fractures developing in the struggle for equal rights and the FBI stepping up its opposition to King by threatening to make public his marital infidelities.
This is an ambitious, always interesting show about the struggle for a more just society by Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and others in the American civil rights movement. Not only did these important historical figures help to change society for the better, but they also inspired those continuing to fight as part of such campaigns as Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion.