Another day, another Pulitzer-Prize winner. Honest, we didn't set out to see plays based on that this trip. It just turned out that four of the seven plays we wanted to see were all winners at some point. For this final show of the trip, we went to see the star-studded revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. We're big fans of Wilson's work, though we haven't quite made it through all ten of the plays in his "American Century Cycle", which has a play set in each decade of the 20th century. The Piano Lesson is set in 1936.
The Play
Siblings in conflict over their shared inheritance--shades of Topdog/Underdog a few days earlier! Only in this case, we have a piano, elaborately carved to represent family members, that is the legacy shared by Boy Willie Charles and his sister, Berniece. Berniece and the piano live with her uncle, Doaker, in Pittsburgh, where Doaker works for the railroad. Boy Willie and his friend Lyman have coaxed a truckload of watermelons up from Mississippi, intending to sell them and use the profits to buy some farmland back home. But Boy Willie needs more money, so he wants to sell the piano. Berniece doesn't want to.
As the story unfolds we learn of the importance of the piano in the family's history. The piano was a gift from a slave-owner named Sutter to his wife, purchased in exchange for two of his slaves, breaking up their family. The wife loved the piano, but missed the slaves, so one of the remaining slaves carved likenesses of them and their whole family history into the piano. These slaves are the ancestors of the present-day Charles family, and it was Boy Willie's father who stole the piano from the Sutter family, which resulted in his death. To complete the circle, it is the Sutter family from whom Boy Willie plans to buy the farmland.
The play revolves around the family members trying to deal with their different attitudes about their past and the value of family and remembrances.
The Production
The show has a very strong cast. Samuel L. Jackson plays Doaker, and his past history with the play (originating the role of Boy Willie at Yale Rep and understudying it in the original Broadway run) gives him a definite sense of being the patriarch. Jackson's wife, Latanya Richardson Jackson, herself an award-winning actor, directs the production. John David Washington (Boy Willie) and Danielle Brooks (Berniece) bring a lot of strength and fire to the conflicted siblings. Michael Potts as Wining Boy is very strong both musically and in his acting. And Ray Fisher as Lymon is a likeable, if ineffectual, pawn to everyone else. I'm always a little worried when actors more known for their movies show up on stage, but this cast is terrific--they definitely have the chops to play in a big house.
The set is pretty simple, allowing the actors to maintain the focus, with the exception of the extremely intricately-carved piano, which is a spectacular piece and basically serves as a character itself.
Bottom Line
Good play, great cast, well produced. It was a very good ending to our week in New York. I highly recommend it. We saw a preview performance, so I suspect it will keep getting better. The show is scheduled for a 17-week run, so you have some time to catch it.
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