I saw "The Conscientious Objector" by Michael Murphy in March 2008. King was played by DB Woodside and LBJ by John Cullum in a performance that equaled
Bryan Cranston's, in my opinion. Here is my review of the play -- which contains my recollection of my encounter with King himself in 1965.
I caught a preview of The Conscientious Objector, a new drama about Martin Luther King and his opposition to the Vietnam War, at Theater Row on Wednesday. Very good, but I felt let down because on Sunday I had seen Conversations in Tusculum, another historical drama that was superior. MLK believed that his religion compelled him to denounce the war, but his position ran afoul of President Johnson, who had achieved much progress on civil rights, and afoul of much of the black leadership of the day who thought that Vietnam was a distraction, at best, or a hindrance to further civil rights progress. Playwright Michael Murphy shows MLK agonizing with his colleagues, including Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young who were skeptical, and James Bevel and Coretta Scott King who supported him. MLK is played by DB Woodside, best known as the President on 24. He is a good actor but I was distracted by his appearance: he is tall and bald with a fringe of black hair. MLK was short with a full head of hair. Woodside's accent and pattern of speech were not the same as King's but mostly, I felt that, although Woodside is full of charisma, he did not convey the magical ability to inspire that MLK possessed. I was lucky to have witnessed MLK give a speech at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1965. He was dignified, eloquent, mellifluent and hypnotic. I knew that I was not seeing just a Baptist preacher. He had that moral suasion of a towering man of compelling character. John Cullum, the Tony-winning Bway veteran, played LBJ with a good accent and the requisite bravado, but he, also, was too short and thin for a physical match. Rachel Leslie was a perfect Mrs. King -- she looked just like her and captured her loving toughness. Director Carl Forsman stages the many scenes rapid-fire, with some beginning before the previous scene had ended. But the play tends to be static during Woodside's best scenes when he is quiet or just listening to the others. The stage comes alive when Jimonn Cole appears as Rev. James Bevel, a hot-headed anti-war zealot. (Bevel later went off the deep end and wound up as Lyndon LaRouche's VP running mate in 1992.) Murphy says in the program notes that some liberties were taken with history. I didn't mind, though, I think he went too far by imagining a '67 or '68 White House meeting in which LBJ cried and they prayed together. (The online King Encyclopedia says that MLK and LBJ did not speak after '66, although LBJ called MLK twice but MLK did not return the calls.) The play should be seen by those too young to remember these events. MLK was proved correct in his assertion that Vietnam was so damaging to the US. And the play shows that J. Edgar Hoover's animus against MLK was a precursor to the politics of personal destruction that has thrived ever since. The lessons for today are obvious. And Murphy tells us how a true moral leader can change a nation.
|