He’s not in The Piano Lesson (now on Netflix), but we’ll lead with Denzel Washington anyway. This is the third August Wilson play Washington has helped adapt to film – he produced Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and directed, produced and starred in Fences – and this time, he’s made it a family affair. Youngest son Malcolm Washington directs, and eldest son John David Washington (Tenet, BlacKkKlansman) stars. The latter and co-stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Fisher reprise their roles from the play’s 2022 Broadway run, with Danielle Deadwyler (Till) rounding out a highly talented cast. It’s no surprise, then, that this adaptation lives up to the standards of its talent, who make sure our eyes stay glued to the screen.
The Gist: The lynching attempt was inevitable. While a White family enjoys a fireworks display, three Black men, with a young boy in tow, heist an ornately carved piano from the family’s house. They escape, but one man stays behind, and ends up running into the woods as White men torch his shack. Twenty-five years later, that young boy, Boy Willie (John David Washington), is an adult. He and his buddy Lymon (Fisher) haul a truckload of watermelons from Mississippi to Pittsburgh. Boy Willie has some money saved. He’ll get more money by selling the watermelons. And he’ll get even more money, totaling enough to buy his own plot of farmland, if he can talk his sister Berniece (Deadwyler) into selling that piano. But it’s a big ask, and he knows it. It’s 1936.
This piano. It symbolizes both past and future: The carvings illustrate the story of their family, the Charles family, dating back about 100 years to their time as slaves in the Deep South – it’s a one-of-a-kind priceless heirloom with deep sentimental value. Berniece can’t bring herself to play it anymore, but you can understand why she so passionately fights her brother to keep it. But Boy Willie has a point: That thing is about the past, and if you sell it, you can create your own future. A Black man with land has a level of control and ownership of his life that few Black men had in America. He’s persistent. He needles and cajoles and browbeats his sister, but she firmly and angrily holds the line. “If he come up here thinking he gonna sell that piano, then he come up here for nothin’,” she spits.
Boy Willie knows damn well that he’s kicking a hornet’s nest. He might even enjoy it a little. He and Berniece have an audience for their conflict, an audience that eventually manifests as participants: She lives with their uncle Doaker (Jackson), who’s a reserved, reasonable man wise enough to not get between them. His brother Wining Boy (Michael Potts), so named for his propensity for drink, drops by to visit; he and Doaker played a key role in liberating the piano from its original owners. Avery Brown (Corey Hawkins) is a local preacher who’s sweet on Berniece, even though she values him more as a platonic friend. Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) is Berniece’s daughter, who doesn’t know the story behind the piano. The man from the cold open, who didn’t escape with the piano? That’s Boy Charles (Stephan James), who’s dead but with significant presence in this story regardless. And speaking of ghosts, Sutter, the man who owned the Charles family as slaves, seems to be haunting them, appearing and disappearing upstairs as tension among the family escalates. Something has to give here. Something.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s very safe to say, if Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom struck a chord with you, The Piano Lesson will as well – they’re all culled from Wilson’s 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, which Washington reportedly hopes to adapt in its entirety.
Performance Worth Watching: John David Washington is often uncannily reminiscent of his father – read: highly charismatic, showy without being show-offy – and Deadwyler is brilliantly steadfast in her fury. But Jackson defies expectations in a make-the-most-of-your-moments role asking him to tame his usual outsized persona and be the movie’s vital grounding force.
Memorable Dialogue: “This ain’t no dirt,” Boy Willie’s father explains to him. “This is land.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: The Piano Lesson does not break the mold for adaptations of theater productions – it absolutely feels “stagey” in the sense that the performances are outsized, set pieces are minimized and the emphasis is on dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And that dialogue is extraordinary – the power of Wilson’s writing and premise is undeniable, and the Washingtons pay deep respect to the material, which is bold and muscular enough to push past stage-ready outsized performances and command the spotlight. The words carry the most weight here, bolstering the cast top-to-bottom, from Jackson’s understated expressions to Hawkins and Fisher’s surprisingly sensitive and complex characterizations.
This, frankly, is about what we should expect. The cast delivers rousing performances; long takes raise tension; text layers with subtext in a most profound, subtly provocative and emotionally and intellectually engaging manner. Although Malcolm Washington struggles to integrate the story’s supernatural component – said moments sometimes come off as a clunky haunted-house movie – there’s no doubt its’s necessary, as the fractured Charles family barrels, almost chaotically, toward a necessary emotional exorcism. The Piano Lesson may not be perfect, but there’s no denying its power.
Our Call: The Piano Lesson’s themes are as bold as its performances. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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