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Despite its noble intentions, Michael Wayne Turner III’s Ghost of King (world premiere through June 23 at FLAX art & design, Oakland) faces a major problem in that Turner clearly didn’t have anyone tell him “no.” Turner is the play’s author and sole performer—typical of a solo show. Yet he’s also the director, which actually is rare for solo shows. With so much focus directed on the writer-performer in a show like this, one needs an objective eye to help mold the script and provide adequate feedback for a story that will be told through a single voice. Turner didn’t have that voice, which stops the show from dealing with its other problems.
That’s a shame, because there’s a lot of good stuff to be found in the play. So much so that it makes one all the more desperate for Turner to collaborate with a fellow artist that would steer this piece towards the greatness it could have.
We enter the fog-filled FLAX performance area to find Turner already standing statue-like at the pulpit, his hands at either side and his eyes down. The audio plays the sort of conscious hip-hop with which the late Dr. King would have agreed in terms of message, however much he may have objected to the explicit language. The white podium stands atop a circular red platform, which is surrounded by candles, many of which are also found under our seats and aligning the entire upstage wall. (There’s no credited scenic designer for the show.) Eventually, Turner slowly begins to move, as if he’s practicing a speech in his head beforehand and is trying to perfect it before he has to deliver it at last.
After a curtain speech by producer Xavier Cunningham—in which the audience are actively encouraged to take photos and Cunningham notes the kismet of the venue being on Oakland’s MLK Way—our show begins with a projected image of RFK (the dead one who had King surveilled, not his anti-vaxxer son who continues to defend that surveillance) announcing the late reverend’s murder. We then go into a montage of footage of the man in action before Turner has the audience rise for the Kirk Franklin version of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”
When the song concludes, we finally learn that Turner’s character is not the late Dr. King. He’s the modern-day Reverend Ghost, and we are his congregation. He’s a jovial, animated sort who isn’t above using profanity in sermons. He’ll frequently break off into Harlem-style beat poetry to get his message across. He doesn’t want any word wasted. “Why did they kill King?” he asks us. “Why?! Was it something he said?”
We’re barely five minutes in and we’re already in the midst of an entertaining meditation of the legacy of MLK and how it’s used in contemporary context. These opening minutes promise us a show that will challenge, educate, and reassure all at the same time. It’s a promise that the show immediately breaks.
Ghost says he wants to provide context about King by reading from one of his lesser-known speeches, the one he gave on the 31st of March 1968. It’s a great speech, one that shows just how much of a radical (and socialist) he really was, despite right-wing attempts to reimagine him as a pushover. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the speech.
The problem is that Turner-as-Ghost reads the speech in its entirety. That’s it. That’s the entire play. I’m not kidding: Turner got Oakland Theatre Project to greenlight the performer reading one of the late Dr. King’s unsung speeches and to call that a show in and of itself.
Sure, every now and then Ghost will break out of his MLK persona to say how much he loves a particular line, but there’s no context to anything and, for that matter, no real point to the character of Ghost. Turner got one of the Bay Area’s best performance troupes to pay for nothing more than Turner proving he has a very good memory. Almost anyone could do that. (Hell, I’ve done that, but it was a small part of a larger show.)
As talented a performer as Turner is—and make no mistake: his performance is fantastic—the show is less a work of art and more intent left unchecked, a squandered opportunity masquerading as a great revelation.
As OTP now only requires masking during their Friday evening performances, I was only one-of-a-handful of people masked for this Sunday matinee. My Aranet4’s CO² readings topped off around 1071ppm at the end of the 90-min, intermission-free show.
The speech that makes up the bulk of Turner’s Ghost of King is a winner. The actor performing it does so masterfully. The atmosphere created in the FLAX is appropriate (though one should be warned about the excessive use of stage fog). But that’s all it is. There are a thousand different things Turner could have done with this material, but he picks the path of least resistance. That does no one a service—not Dr. King, not Turner himself, and certainly not the audience watching the show.
GHOST OF KING’s world premiere runs through June 23 at FLAX art and design, Oakland. Tickets and further info here.
