“You just a man, baby,” says Camae, a sassy young chambermaid, to the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in The Mountaintop. It’s a phrase repeated often in Katori Hall’s bold and surprising play, receiving its Toronto premiere from Obsidian Theatre. But we don’t need the frequent reminders. As envisioned by Hall, the eloquent Baptist preacher and civil rights leader is very much a creature of flesh and blood, riddled with weaknesses and fears.

The Mountaintop is set on the stormy night of April 3, 1968, less than 24 hours before King was shot to death by an assassin on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King, vividly portrayed by Kevin Hanchard, has returned to his motel room following a rally in support of striking black sanitation workers, during which he gave his eerily prescient “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. On the podium, King had thundered, “I’m not fearing any man!” But in his room, he stealthily draws the window curtains, checks his phone for wire-tapping, and jumps nervously at the crash of thunder as if it were a gunshot.

Weary, wracked with a smoker’s cough, he calls down to room service for coffee to help fuel another night of speech-writing. The sexy, mysterious Camae (Alana Hibbert) arrives, bringing not just the java but also—seemingly by happy coincidence—a pack of the Pall Mall cigarettes he’s been craving. For the first two-thirds of the play, the pair smoke, flirt (despite the fact King is married), and argue over his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience. But just when we’ve settled into the play’s shabby realism—abetted by Judith Bowden’s deliciously dingy motel-room set—Hall suddenly shifts gears and sends it roaring into the surreal.

It wouldn’t be fair to reveal the details, but suffice it to say the mind-bending final third of the play involves a seriocomic riff on Jesus’s agony in the garden and a breathtaking one on Moses’s mountaintop vision of the Promised Land (not to mention a passing nod to It’s a Wonderful Life). If Hall’s bizarre climax doesn’t entirely work, it still shows that this emerging African-American playwright has a lively wit and an unfettered imagination.

The Mountaintop, Hall’s breakthrough work, made an unexpected splash when it premiered in the U.K. in 2009, winning her an Olivier Award. The play’s Broadway debut had a less enthusiastic critical reception, despite a starry production with Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett. Obsidian’s version is a co-pro with the Shaw Festival that opened there this summer and has now transferred to the Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park.

The piece is a perfect fit in the Daniels’ Aki Studio space, where Hanchard and Hibbert give performances so intimate that, when Hanchard’s King pulls off his shoes and crinkles his nose, we can almost smell his stinky feet. The actor first played the role in Calgary last season, and he fully embodies the man in all his aspects, from the fervent orator and headstrong activist, to the self-conscious celebrity and tender-hearted father. The play may offer a warts-and-all picture of King, but it is never less than affectionate, and Hanchard radiates a robust warmth throughout.

A delightful Hibbert, meanwhile, is consistently intriguing as smart, foul-mouthed Camae. Strutting about the motel room like one of the Supremes, she holds her own against King with playful insolence—until the full extent of her identity is revealed.

Philip Akin’s expertly paced production also keeps us intrigued, even before things get weird. Lighting designer Kevin Lamotte and projection designer Andrew Smith are cut loose in the final minutes, turning Bowden’s motel room into a forward-hurtling time machine. Freddy Gabrsek, on the other hand, opens the play by blasting us into the past with a sound collage that mixes clips from King’s speeches with the politicized rock and R&B songs of the late 1960s.

One of those classic tunes is Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect.” Those who revere Martin Luther King, Jr. may feel that The Mountaintop hasn’t accorded him enough of that. But as Akin wisely points out in his program note, the King in this play is the product of Katori Hall’s imagination. And by dwelling on his feet of clay, smelly or otherwise, she has brought him down from the mountaintop where icons stand and back among the rest of us. Her MLK is “just a man, baby.” Given what he achieved, that in itself should be inspiring.

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