The Mountaintop, Front Porch Arts Collective in collaboration with the Suffolk University Modern Theatre, at Modern Theatre, Boston, through October 12. frontporchartscollective.org

At a time when hatred is rampant in America, Katori Hall's insightful 2010 drama "The Mountaintop" resonates with new timeliness. Imagining the last evening of Martin Luther King Junior's life before his April 4, 1968 assassination, this moving two-character play strikingly focuses on the great civil rights leader's humanity. As the Front Porch Arts Collective revival opens at Suffolk University's Modern Theatre, MLK is awaiting the arrival of friend and confidant Ralph Abernathy at Memphis' Lorraine Motel during a thunderstorm. Earlier the great leader had spoken to municipal sanitation workers. Curiously, Hall—a Memphis native herself—portrays King as a human being "warts and all." To this end, she has the famed preacher removing his shoes to reveal both foot odor and socks with holes. These details become emblematic of his normalcy.

Quite soon a spunky hotel maid named Camae (a name with which playwright Hall pays tribute to her own mother, who regretted not attending King's Memphis speech) enters and proceeds to move from her duties at his Room 306 to an ongoing discussion and debate about the needs and concerns of black Americans as well as the methods used in protest. There are telling moments in which King and Malcolm X—both identified as 39—are contrasted in terms of the former's appeal to love and the latter's frequent focus on hate. Eventually Camae discloses that she is a novice angel meant to escort King to heaven. In a particularly humorous moment, Hall has Camae referred to God as a female who seems to hang up on King when he insists that he needs to lead the people to the Promised Land. As Camae leads King to the title future vantage point, a quick survey of people and events stretching to current times—brilliantly projected by designer Pamela Hersch—follows.

Multiple talent Maurice Emmanuel Parent tightly directs Hall's fascinating 90 minute, no intermission play. Dominic Carter captures both the dynamism and the vulnerability of King. Carter is particularly riveting as King struggles to understand Camae's point of view and perspective as a woman. Kiera Prusmack catches Camae's atypical responses as a hotel worker and convincingly moves from her employment to her new responsibilities as an angel. Carter and Prusmack make their exchanges absorbing and arresting. Kudos also go to Brian Lilienthal's vivid lighting and Joshua Jackson's often thunderous sound design during the ongoing storm.

During the vision of the future, a slogan "The baton passes on" is repeated as a kind of rallying cry. This critic found Hall's intriguing play quite memorable in an Underground Railway Theater staging at the Central Square Theater in 2013. The even stronger Front Porch effort rates a very hearty "Amen."