The Piano Lesson

Netflix's 2024 adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson is a family affair, both within the story world and behind the camera.

Directed by Malcolm Washington, one of Denzel Washington's sons, The Piano Lesson stars John David Washington, Malcolm's brother and high-wattage screen performer, and was produced by their father.

Set in Wilson's beloved Pittsburgh, The Piano Lesson is part of the American Century Cycle, ten plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, that tell stories of Black life among the African American diaspora, mostly in Wilson's neighborhood, the Hill District. 

The plays are expansive and poetic, many bridging the gulf between history and myth, incorporating large passages of monologue and memory. Though varied in focus and execution, the plays are all robust representations of Wilson's view of the American experience, a mix of drama and comedy, realism and fantasy, dreams realized and deferred. They are hugely important parts of the country's theatrical and literary history. 

(Denzel Washington has appeared in several Century Cycle productions and has committed to adapting Wilson's work for the screen.)

The Piano Lesson, first staged in 1986 and filmed for television in 1995, is set in 1936 and tells the story of the Charles family, whose members have gradually moved from the segregated South to Pittsburgh. Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) is the patriarch of the family home that he shares with his niece, Berniece, (Danielle Deadwyler) and her young daughter, Maretha, (Skylar Aleece Smith). They are visited one night by Berniece's brother Boy Willie (Washington) and  a family friend, Lymon (Ray Fisher). 

Boy Willie and Lymon have driven a truck filled with watermelons to sell in hopes of raising part of the money Boy Willie needs to buy land once owned by former slavers.  He means to stay in Mississippi, despite the hardships, and farm the land.  Boy Willie wants to get the rest of the money by selling a cherished piano that was engraved by their grandfather with images of the enslaved family members. The piano was taken from the slave owners 25 years before and moved with the family to Pittsburgh.

Berniece reveres the instrument, even though she refuses to play it, prizing the memories it contains. Her brother sees it as a wasted opportunity, and most of the play, which is set mainly in the living room and kitchen of Doaker's house, is the battle of wills between the siblings, which, in turn, represents the tension between the Black past and Black future, both haunted, literally, by spirits of injustice and pain.

The performances in Malcolm Washington's adaptation of Wilson's staging are superb, with Jackson, Deadwyler and John David Washington solidly delivering the emotional peaks and valleys of this stirring and punishing study of a family struggling with their individual and collective identities. 

Highly Recommended.