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‘The Piano Lesson’ Review: The Washington Family Comes Together Around August Wilson’s Legacy-Themed Masterwork
Denzel Washington executive produces a powerful adaptation of a major American play, directed by one son (Malcolm) and starring another (John David).
With “The Piano Lesson,” Wilson wrote one of the great female roles of his career, and in Deadwyler, we get a leading lady who smolders even when silent, finding layers even the author couldn’t have anticipated — which helps, since there’s a stage-stilted sound to much of the dialogue. While all 10 are performed regularly on stages around America, Pulitzer-winning “The Piano Lesson” encompasses the greatest span of time, drawing the spirits of previous generations into the picture — not just Sutter’s ghost, lurking upstairs, but the family members whose faces appear on the heirloom. Though set in the ’30s, it speaks to decades of progress, contrasting those who stayed behind in Mississippi and other Southern states (represented here by the Boy Willie character) with those who participated in the Great Migration to the North, as Berniece and her daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) did.
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