The Piano Lesson Returns With Generations Of Memory Laid On
Jackson McHenryThe Piano Lesson.
The house has the look of a skeleton. The set of The Piano Lesson is all posts and beams, no walls and ceilings, and some of those bones look like theyve been cleaved apart. Its an appropriate sort of place to be filled with memories of the dead, and when Danielle Brookss Berniece wakes up after the curtain rises, theres a fluttering projection of a spirit slipping away from her. August Wilsons drama deals directly in ghost stories, and this revival seems especially haunted internally and meta-theatrically toiling under the weight of the past.
In the play, the characters pasts enter by way of Bernieces brother, Boy Willie . Its 1936 in Pittsburgh, and Berniece lives in this house with her uncle Doaker, her daughter, and the prized musical instrument of the title, her family having recently made its way up from the South in the midst of the Great Migration. Shes aspiring to city life, trying to teach her daughter to play the piano even though she herself has given it up. In the first scene, Boy Willie storms in, in a furious bluster, with plans of his own. He has come north with a truckful of watermelons. He wants to sell them, and the piano, to buy back the land their family once worked as slaves. He brings the news that Sutter, the white man who owned that land and their ancestors, has died. As the action progresses, Sutters ghost makes itself known to Berniece, exerting hegemony of its own.
See New Photos Of Samuel L Jackson Danielle Brooks And The Cast Of ‘the Piano Lesson’ On Broadway
Tune in! August Wilson’s 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson is having its first Broadway revival, featuring a star-studded cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and John David Washington. In The Piano Lesson, two adult siblings debate what to do with the family piano: Berniece wants to keep the heirloom, which is hand-carved with their ancestors’ faces, while Boy Willie wants to sell it and buy the land their enslaved ancestors worked on. Jackson plays…
Primary And Secondary Schools
is the school district serving the city. and are New Haven’s two largest public secondary schools.
, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including , High School in the Community, , , , , , the and the , all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.
The city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.
Also Check: Williams Allegro 88-key Digital Piano
‘the Piano Lesson’ Review Samuel L Jackson Danielle Brooks And John David Washington Strike All The Right Chords
The Piano Lesson at the Barrymore Theatre has been tuned to perfection. Under the deft guidance of LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who makes her Broadway directing debut, August Wilsons stirring story filled with richly drawn characters, family drama, humor, and beyond-this-world mystery comes vividly to life. Bluesy poetry and musicality are hallmarks of Wilsons scripts. Its easy to see and hear that here. Over the course of 2 3/4 hours, bits of boogie-woogie, spirituals,…
Boy Willie: Wining Boy’s Liable To See Anything I’m Sur
BOY WILLIE: He say to bring it on out. I told him BOY WILLIE: Ready? Lift! I was calling for my sister, Miss Berniece Charles. I told him some man wanted to buy it for eleven hundred dollars LYMON: Man, this piano is heavy! It’s gonna take more and asked him if he would go any better. He said yeah, than me and you to move this piano. he would give me eleven hundred and fifty dollars for it BOY WILLIE: We can do it. Come onwe did it before. if it was the same piano. I described it to him again and LYMON: Niggeryou crazy! That piano weighs five hun- he told me to bring it out. dred pounds! LYMON: Why didn’t you tell him to come and pick BOY WILLIE: I got three hundred pounds of it! I know you it up? BOY WILLIE: I didn’t want to have no problem with can carry two hundred pounds! You be lifting them cot- Berniece. This way we just take it on out there and it be out the ton sacks! Come on lift this piano! way. He want to charge twenty-five dollars to pick it up. LYMON: You should have told him the man LYMON: It’s stuck. Something holding it. was gonna give
ACT TWO, Scene 5 93
Recommended Reading: Chords That Sound Good Together Piano
‘the Piano Lesson’ Sets Additional Broadway Casting
UPDATE: The complete cast also includes Nadia Daniel and Jurnee Elizabeth Swan alternating the role of Marthea, along with Shirine Babb, Charles Browning, Peter Jay Fernandez, Sharina Martin, Warner Miller, Doron JePaul Mitchell, and Kim Sullivan.The full creative team includes Tony Award-nominated set designer Beowulf Boritt, Tony-nominated costume designer Toni-Leslie James, Tony-nominated lighting designer Japhy Weideman, Tony-winning sound designer Scott Lehrer, Drama Desk Award-nominated…
Unlock Your Free Trial
The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh in 1936, with all the action taking place in the house of Doaker Charles. A 137-year-old, upright piano, decorated with totems in the manner of African sculpture, dominates the parlor.
The play opens at dawn. Boy Willie, Doaker’s nephew, knocks at the door and enters with his partner, Lymon. Two have come from Mississippi to sell watermelons. Willie has not seen his sister Berniece, who lives with Doaker, for three years as he has been serving a sentence on the Parchman Prison Farm.
Willie asks his uncle for a celebratory drink: the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog have drowned Sutter in his own well. Willie intends to sell the family piano and use the money to buy Sutter’s land, the land his ancestors once worked as slaves. Doaker, however, is sure Berniece will not part with the piano. Indeed, Avery Browna preacher who has been courting Berniece since her husband Crawley diedhas already tried to get her to sell it. Willie schemes to get in touch with the prospective buyer himself.
Suddenly Berniece cries out off-stage, “Go on get away.” Berniece claims she has seen Sutter’s ghost, calling Boy Willie’s name. She is convinced that her brother pushed Sutter into the well. Shaken, she refuses to cooperate with his plans.
PLUS
Also Check: Used Piano Brands To Avoid
The Piano Lesson Review August Wilson Revival Hits A Bum Note
Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York
John David Washington and Samuel L Jackson star in a tonally misjudged drama oddly played for awkward laughs
The Charles family is wading in grief, deluges of trauma rotting its roots.
A desperate Boy Willie has come north to sell the familys piano. It is a relic that his enslaved ancestors were traded for by their owner, Sutter. It is an heirloom Boy Willies own father died to steal back.
Boy Willie is adamant on using the pianos profits to buy land his ancestors slaved on. Its a chance for a man who has spent his life indebted to steer his own destiny. Im supposed to build on what they left me, says an impassioned Willie to his uncle Doaker , the anchor and archivist of the Charles family.
But, Berniece insists that the piano stay firmly planted, tired of her brothers impulsivity and disregard for the pianos legacy . Unlike Boy Willie, Berniece and Doaker have seen Sutters ghost haunting the familys residence. The spirit, they argue, is a presence of the past that Boy Willie too easily forgets.
Under Jacksons helm, the productions problems begin with its curious lack of vulnerability. Every inner glimpse into the Charles family and their tribe is turned into a performance, squeezed of its honesty.
Its not that comedic elements have no place in Wilsons world. Its not that an audience isnt allowed to have its own, unique reaction.
Brother Say He Selling The Land To Me I Got One
LYMON: They treat you better up here. don’t matter to me what the law say. I take and look at BOY WILLIE: I ain’t worried about nobody mistreating me. it for myself. They treat you like you let them treat you. They mistreat LYMON: That’s why you gonna end up back down there on me I mistreat them right back. Ain’t no difference in me the Parchman Farm. and the white man. BOY WILLIE: I ain’t thinking about no Parchman Farm. YouWINING BOY: Ain’t no difference as far as how somebody liable to go back before me. supposed to treat you. I agree with that. But I’ll tell you LYMON: They work you too hard down there. All that the difference between the colored man and the white weeding and hoeing and chopping down trees. I didn’t man. Alright. Now you take and eat some berries. They like all that. taste real good to you. So you say I’m gonna go out and WINING BOY: You ain’t got to like your job on Parchman. get me a whole pot of these berries and cook them up to Hey, tell him, Doaker, the only one got to like his job is make a pie or whatever. But you ain’t looked to see the waterboy. them berries is sitting in the white fellow’s yard. Ain’t DOAKER: If he don’t like his job he need to set that bucket got no fence around them. You figure anybody want down.
Don’t Miss: On-stage Kb9503b Height Adjustable Piano Bench
As Part Of The Connecticut Colony
In 1664 New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Some members of the New Haven Colony seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere went on to establish .
It was made co- of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.
In 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from to New Haven, establishing New Haven as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from merchant , former Governor of , the name of the Collegiate School was changed to .
For over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, as in the . As the approached, General and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the government in Britain could be resolved short of rebellion. On 23 April 1775, which is still celebrated in New Haven as , the Second Company, , of New Haven entered the struggle against the . Under Captain , they broke into the powder house to arm themselves and began a three-day march to . Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers’ professional military bearing, including uniforms.
The Piano Lesson Review: August Wilsons Phantom Notes
John David Washington, Danielle Brooks and Samuel L. Jackson star in the first Broadway revival of Wilsons haunting family drama set in 1936.
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this articleGive this articleGive this article
- The Piano Lesson
Four Black men gathered around a kitchen table exuberantly sing a work song , a Black woman girds herself with her grief for the husband and father she lost to the anger of white men, and siblings fight over a seemingly haunted family heirloom that tells a story of generational trauma and loss. These circumstances are more than enough to raise the dead.
Or at least they are in the Charles household, in the Broadway revival of August Wilsons The Piano Lesson, which opened Thursday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.
First staged in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theater, The Piano Lesson made its Broadway debut at the Walter Kerr three years later. That year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama one of two Wilson won for his American Century Cycle, a collection of 10 plays, one for each decade of the 20th century, depicting African American life.
Its an august instrument with a knotty history, linking the Charles family to their enslaved ancestors and the white family that owned them. Each panel is covered with figures representing the Charleses even the pianos front legs are elaborately sculpted.
Don’t Miss: What Falling In Love Feels Like Piano
‘the Piano Lesson’ Starring Samuel L Jackson And Danielle Brooks Sets Broadway Premiere
The first Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning The Piano Lesson has set its dates and venue! The previously announced production, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and John David Washington, will play a 16-week engagement at the St. James Theatre beginning September 19, 2022. Directing is Tony Award-nominated actor LaTanya Richardson Jackson, making her Broadway directorial debut and becoming the first woman to direct a Wilson play on Broadway.Jackson, a 2022 Academy…
The Piano Lesson Starring Samuel L Jackson Sets New Broadway Theatre
The Fall 2022 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson will no longer run at the St. James Theatre. The Piano Lesson will now play a 17-week engagement at the Barrymore Theatre, with performances from September 19.”We are thrilled to have secured this iconic playhouse, which happened to have been one of August Wilson’s favorite theaters. The legacy of the Barrymore makes it the ideal space to experience a play all about how we shepherd and look after our ancestral legacies,” said…
You May Like: Perfect By Ed Sheeran Piano
All The Celebrities That Have Starred In ‘the Piano Lesson’
In 1990, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson premiered on Broadway. It had an impressive cast: Charles S. Dutton , S. Epatha Merkerson , and a young Samuel L. Jackson in his Broadway debut as an understudy. Now, Jackson is leading the first Broadway revival of The Piano Lesson, directed by his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, a Tony nominee for her performance in A Raisin in the Sun in 2014. But those aren’t the only celebrities in this…
Extended By Popular Demand Through January 29
s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork THE PIANO LESSON returns to Broadway in the event of the season, starring Academy Award® winner Samuel L. Jackson, Screen Actors Guild Award® nominee John David Washington, and Tony® and Emmy® nominee Danielle Brooks, directed by Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson.
A battle is brewing in the Charles household. At the center lies the familys prized heirloom piano. On one side, a brother plans to build the family fortune by selling it. On the other, a sister will go to any length to keep it and preserve the family history. Only their uncle stands in between. But even he cant hold back the ghosts of the past.
THE PIANO LESSON is the play for now. It reaches into the souls of the present, revealing startling truths about how we perceive our pastand who gets to define our legacy.
Recommended Reading: How To Play Piano For Beginners
The Piano Lesson Review: Samuel L Jackson Leads A Starry Cast In An Affecting Broadway Ghost Story
Every family has a skeleton or two in its closet. The starry new Broadway revival of s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson has a whole houseful of ghosts.
Director LaTanya Richardson Jackson emphasizes indeed, embellishes the spooky parts of the story, which is the fourth chapter in Wilsons interlocking 10-play series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. In this formidable undertaking, Wilson tracks the Black experience across each decade of the 20th century.
More from Variety
In 1936, when Piano Lesson is set, the Charles family appears to have survived the worst of the Depression. Doaker Charles , the current patriarch, owns his own home a true measure of success in this era. A man who adheres to the principle of family stability, he shares this weathered stronghold with his niece, Berniece and her young daughter, Maretha .
Doaker is a pensioned railroad cook whose periodic arias to his treasured profession are delivered by Jackson with the rapturous passion of a religious convert. Berniece cleans house for a white family that seems to value her. Even Maretha dutifully does her homework.
A human hurricane blasts through this quiet household when Bernieces brother, Boy Willie , makes a surprise visit from back home in Sunflower, 1,800 miles away. The truck he rode up on belongs to cousin Lymon , although ownership seems to be a wobbly concept in this family.
Best of Variety
A Piano Lesson With No False Notes
- Save this story for later.
- Save this story for later.
LaTanya Richardson Jacksons star-studded Broadway revival of s The Piano Lesson, is, in a word, magnificent. As an actor, Richardson Jackson has long been part of the countrywide, unofficial Wilson theatre companyshe was part of the momentous 2008 Kennedy Center series of staged readings honouring his work and, in 2009, she played Bertha Holly in a Tony-nominated revival of the playwrights Joe Turners Come and Gone. The production, now at the Ethel Barrymore, may be Richardson Jacksons first time directing on Broadwayher 2013 directorial début, Two Trains Running, also by Wilson, at Atlantas True Colors Theatre Company, is her only other professional directing creditbut her touch here is deft, sure, confident. After all, she has known Wilsons Pulitzer Prize-winning play since its première, in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theatre, when her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, created the character of Boy Willie. There are moments in her thrilling production when she seems to have known it in some deeper, stranger way even before then.
You May Like: Heart And Soul Piano Song
