August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” staged again on Broadway in 2022 and which has been carefully made into a film by Malcolm Washington using the same cast has Berniece who stays away from the piano since her mother died. It only stands in her living room as an evidence of what her parents and their parents had to go through so that future generations could have freedom. The family piano, in Barbara’s eyes, not only the instrument demonstrates what her family has accomplished and lost, but it is also a more rudimentary emblem. The images of her forefathers are literally written into the polished wood of the precious artifact.
Berniece’s only brother is called Boy Willie, and right at the beginning of the play he storms into her house with a certain scheme. Boy Willie is convinced that he can raise enough funds from selling that piano (as well as the truck full of watermelons parked outside) to buy a portion of the land once worked on by his family who were enslaved. He believes the piano, which is both owned by him and Berniece, will be honored by that wish. However, the theme of memory is overwhelming in “The Piano Lesson” and in this case, remembered detail is 1936 whereas the actions take place much later in time. Somewhere up there is the specter of the white man who ‘owned’ their family and whose son snatched the vital object the piano from them.
The Piano Lesson featuring the sibling rivalry of two characters played by Danielle Dead Wyler and John David Washington tells the story of two people one who is determined to move on and the other clinging to the past. The film remained tyrannically Dead Wyler’s as most of the who performed on Broadway are fans of the show. In ‘The Piano Lesson” Wilson was fortunate to have enhanced his career by including one of the finest female characters he ever created And with Dead Wyler we will have the kind of leading lady who is so robustly dramatic even in what is almost silence, and discovers depth that even the artist could not have pictured such as the fact that much of the dialogue has a somewhat theatrical quality to it which hinders.
Boy Willie and his accomplice Lyman (Ray Fisher) appear to be quite prepared for any situation; however, at such a time Berniece is in bed. Ralph’s uncle Doakes, played by Samuel L. Jackson who gives one of his most beautiful understated performances, comes to a conclusion immediately about them and says ‘chuckles, “Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.” Every time she looks at the instrument, it brings to mind the tears of her mother over it. Her father sought due restoration for the slavery imposed on him and died for the piano, which had been recovered by him long back with two accomplices from a white mob and set ablaze thirty years ago. The razzia, if you can call it that, is how we open the film, enhanced by the smoke from red, white and blue firecrackers. That allows the movie to be filmic right away, while traumatic flashbacks later in the movie help to reveal Wilson’s one room play later in the movie.
Considering how “The Piano Lesson” addresses issues regarding family inheritance, it’s no surprise that another family has pulled it off as well. Well, you guessed it, Malcolm Washington, his feature length directing debut, is the son of legendary actor Denzel Washington, who has already starred in one of his great roles in a Wilson play, “Fences.” John’s younger brother John David Washington has even appeared in the Broadway rendition playing ‘Boy Willie’, he is seven years older than Malcolm with their sister Katia also a producer with Denzel on this film.
There’s no denying, one Iowa wonders how the Washingtons feel about the idea of family lineage expressed within this film but there is one terrific factor Out of Wilsons 10 plays set in Pittsburgh, this is the only one featuring such a gap time wise, the “Century Cycle” Wilson’s most famous cycle in which the author celebrated all the highs and lows of African Americans by writing about one decade at a time. However all ten of them are staged quite regularly in the US, the Pulitzer award winning “The Piano Lesson” presents the most cover just so we have more backgrounds, not just Sutter’s ghost haunting somewhere upstairs.
Placed somewhere in the 1930s, it captures the essence of how years of change took place, how some embers were quenched after Mississippi and some other southern states (this character is portrayed by Boy Willier) in comparison to Mrs. Berniece and Ms. Maratha (Skylar Leece Smith) who migrated to the North America during the Great Migration. It offers backlash against Boy Willie’s confrontation with a white supremacist carceral system and the even more horrifying heritage of extra legal violence that took not only their father, but also Berniece her spouse, Crawley, whose biography is not so coherent.
More significant still, “The Piano Lesson” gives voice to the women who were owned and the Sutter family, who owned or otherwise oppressed them, and who is literally a ghost in the room today. We’re told the old racist slipped and fell down a well, but Berniece believes her brother must have done the dirty deed. Boy Willie tragically believes it was the ‘Ghosts of the Yellow Dog’ adding a whole other layer of the supernatural to the film. Malcolm Washington shows us the ghost of Sutter, but he leaves the other forces of revenge to our minds’ eyes. He prefers to focus on the lives of people; he is in the sitting room while Doakes and old time friend Wining Boy (Michael Potts is simply brill) reminisce. The two of them also sing, adding a much needed variation to a movie that deals too. Too much of history.
Finally, considering all the visuals that Wilson provided Washington with, “The Piano Lesson” is ultimately more talkative than it had to be. There’s the ghost upstairs, yes, but there are also the spirits embedded in the family’s history who are linked to the piano. Tension mounts in the film as Lyman acquires a new silk suit followed by young men, who go to the Hill District’s famous Crawford Grill. Boy Willie has his ideas for the future but so does Berniece, represented by a strong preacher, played by Corey Hawkins, who barely persuades to perform a blessing of her house. That is just one treatment only to begin with in order to exorcise the ghost. If Sutter has all the characteristics of the mental disturbance that haunts their family, ancestral music is the power which can release them from it.
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