Play on Rev. King's final night heads to NYC

A play about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the night before his assassination could be on Broadway stages by this fall following its successful debut in London, England.

Producers Jean Doumanian and Sonia Friedman are planning a fall opening in New York for The Mountaintop.

Written by Katori Hall, a recent graduate of the Juilliard School playwriting program in New York, the play is about a fictitious encounter between King and a woman claiming to be a chambermaid at the Memphis motel where he is staying.

It debuted at London's Fringe Festival before moving to the West End last summer. Last week, it earned two nominations for Olivier Awards for theatre, including a nod for best new play.

No cast has yet been announced for the Broadway production, but African-American director  Kenny Leon has been approached to helm the show at the Rialto Theatre. Leon is to direct Denzel Washington and Viola Davis later this year in Fences.

King was shot April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the day after delivering his  "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in defence of striking sanitation workers.

That speech is figuring prominently on New York stages this February in honour of Black History Month.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance, written and performed by Tony Award nominee Andre De Shields, is a one-man show that features the speech among many seminal moments of African-American life.

The Man in Room 306 is another production about King's final day, and is written and performed by Craig Alan Edwards.