One Family, One Instrument, a Lotta Drama

The musical instrument sitting over in the corner, idle but not gathering dust, at the center of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning play The Piano Lesson is more than just a piano. It’s a family heirloom, passed down several generations and proof of how their lineage endured hardship and tragedy. It’s a piece of art, carved with the faces of those who came before, all rendered with an expertise that would make Michelangelo envious. It’s a symbol of revenge, with a backstory that involves the breaking of unions, the bartering of material goods for souls and one fatalistic case of breaking and entering. For Willie Boy Charles, the main character in Wilson’s masterwork, it’s a ticket to a better life. For his sister Berniece, it’s… well, it’s complicated for Berniece. But some things in this life you hold onto no matter what. And when the idea of unloading it for seed money to buy land is introduced into the conversation, this proud woman will not budge. She may no longer play the piano. But it’s not going anywhere.

The stalemate between these siblings is what drives this drama, and the idea of “To sell, or not to sell” thrums beneath every comic set piece, every casual exchange and every whisper of paranormal activities within Wilson’s extraordinary history lesson. Whether this is the best of the late, great playwright’s collective dectet known as “The Pittsburgh Cycle” is debatable, but the idea that it should be mandatory to see it performed at least once in your life isn’t. In any case, Denzel Washington — who won a Tony for his Broadway run in Wilson’s Fences, and starred in and directed the 2016 Oscar-nominated movie version — has been determined to adapt all 10 stage works for the screen. Fingers crossed he can pull this entire endeavor off; it’d be a huge gift, and not just for cinephiles and completists.

Denzel is merely a producer on The Piano Lesson, the third of the Pittsburgh Cycle plays to get the prestige-movie-season push after Fences and director George C. Wolfe’s take on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). But appropriately enough given the subject matter, he’s made it a family affair: His son Malcolm Washington is making his directorial debut; John David Washington is reprising his turn as Willie Boy from the Broadway production in 2022; his daughter Olivia and his wife Pauletta each have small roles. (The film is dedicated “for mama.”) And like its predecessors, this has one hell of a stacked cast — Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher and Michael Potts were also in the recent theatrical revival, and they’re joined by Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, Stephan James.

It’s a primo actor’s showcase, and the movie (which hits Netflix on November 22nd) is a perfect reminder of the benefits and pitfalls of translation from one medium to the next. Ever wonder what the origin story of this ornate instrument and its significance to the family, as recounted by Willie and Berniece’s Uncle Doaker, looked like? You’ll get a show-and-tell version of the anecdote, which fleshes out the stakes of this tug of war between kin a bit more. Mostly, however, it’s a lot people arguing, bickering, bantering, laughing, crying and raising holy hell in one or two rooms, and its in these smaller scenes that you wish there was a surer, more steady hand (like Wolfe or the elder Washington) on steering wheel. There’s a tendency to simply get out of the way in talky sequences, letting the talents strut and fret their hour on the stage with zero frills. And there’s also a temptation to gussy simple scenes up with a lot of unnecessary cuts, oft-kilter angles, and semi-fussy business. Here, the first-time director opts for a somewhat random combination of both approaches at once, and the overall result is just south of off-key.

Let’s take it from the top: The year is 1936. Willie Boy and his friend, Lymon (Fisher), have traveled from Mississippi to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to sell a truckload of watermelons they’ve harvested. The real reason they’ve made the 1800 mile journey, however, is that piano. Between selling the produce and selling the instrument, Willie Boy will have enough cash to finally purchase the land their family has sharecropped down south for ages. Berniece (Deadwyler), who lives with her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) in a house owned by Uncle Doakes (Jackson), is opposed to the idea. Meanwhile, their other uncle, a professional pianist named Wining Boy (Potts), has just returned from Kansas City, and occasionally offers his two cents on the situation. Meanwhile, Avery (Hawkins), an old friend of the family who’s about to become a fulltime preacher, keeps dropping by to court Berniece.

The reason the land is available, it bears mentioning, is because its owner, a white man named Sutter whose toxic family roots with the Charles run deep, was recently found dead in a well. Everyone blames it on the “ghost of the yellow dog,” a local urban legend that can be traced back to the death of Berniece and Willie Boy’s father (James). Which is why the sudden appearance of mysterious puddles of water in the house’s upstairs hallway, and what looks like a hulking, wheezing figure lurking in the shadows, has everyone but Willie Boy on edge. The Piano Lesson is a tale of a family at odds with itself, its history and its future, but it’s also a ghost story. Literally, as we soon find out, but also in the way that past is never really the past — indeed, Malcolm Washington’s staging of a late-act exorcism, in which the visages on the piano suddenly fill the room around as if they were posed in a portrait, is a great example of when his attempts to add stylistic flourishes truly pay off. (Ditto a drunken sing-along that turns into a percussive, philharmonic release.)

Yet so much of this adaptation lives or dies on whoever is onscreen at any given moment and working the soil of Wilson’s rock-solid foundation of a play, and even with this to-die-for ensemble, everything rarely feels like its in tandem. Having played Willie Boy onstage, John David Washington likely knows this hungry, aspirational man inside and out. But even though raucousness is part of Willie’s pitch and patter, the star doesn’t seem to realize he’s playing for cameras and not the cheap seats anymore. Washington has screen presence for days, but there’s not much modulation in his performance here. Jackson’s role is reduced to a series of reaction shots, which isn’t his fault yet is still frustrating. Hawkins and Potts — a first-rate character actor probably best-known for playing Brother Mouzone on The Wire — make the most of their supporting parts; the former gives an I’m-staying-out-of-this look in the middle of a Willie/Berniece shouting match that’s absolutely priceless. And as in Till, Deadwyler again does the sort of work that makes you think she’s one of those once-in-a-generation actors we’re blessed to witness. A scene involving her, Fisher and a bottle of French perfume raises the film’s temperature to roughly 1,945 degrees Fahrenheit.

She, along with the fact that this play remains a Great American Work of Art no matter the film presentation’s hiccups and pitfalls, is the reason to seek this dizzying drama out. Like the previous two entries in Denzel’s passion project, this fable of heirlooms, grudges and the need for closure fills in a gap in our nation’s collective narrative. They are not stories of everyday lives lived in quiet desperation, but modest and/or stifled ones riotously laughing, sobbing and often screaming to be heard among the din of disappointment. Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.