WISH-LIST WEDNESDAY: The Piano Lesson

PREMIERED: 1987 (Yale Repertory Theatre, Connecticut, USA)

PLAYWRIGHT: August Wilson

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Artwork from the 2023 broadway revival

This week we featured a Pulitzer winning play by August Wilson, and one which, as a musician and piano player myself, is bound to (if you’ll pardon the pun) really strike a chord; in spite of the title though, this is a story that delves deeper than mere instrumental tuition. First premiering almost 4 decades ago, "The Piano Lesson" is a play that surprisingly underperformed when it opened in Connecticut, though it did feature one Samuel L. Jackson in one of his earliest, and most rare of theatre appearances. It is the fourth in Wilson's ten plays that comprise the "Pittsburg Cycle", and was inspired by a painting with the same name by American artist Romare Bearden, itself taking direct inspiration from Henri Matisse and two of his paintings relating to music tuition.

The story follows siblings Boy Willie and Berniece, who squabble over a family heirloom piano, with the forward thinking, progressive Willie wanting it to be sold in order to fund the purchase of farm land in Mississippi, whereas his more traditionalist sister, still grieving the loss of her husband, seeing it as a treasured reminder of their ancestors and the hardships and suffering they endured as slaves, as well as a tribute to their survival. Things are complicated by the emergence of the ghost of Sutter, a former white slave owner, who begins to haunt the house, ultimately forcing Berniece to finally confront her family's past, and come to terms with it.

Michael Potts, John David Washington and Danielle Brooks in "The Piano Lesson"

Though the play didn't win in any of the 5 categories for which it was nominated at the 1990 Tony Awards, it still came away with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that year, and has since been revived in New York twice, most recently in 2023, with Jackson returning to the play, this time as Doaker Charles, the uncle of Willie and Berniece, in a real full circle moment. "The Piano Lesson" has been performed on this side of the Atlantic, being staged at the Tricycle Theatre (now the Kiln) in 1993, however we haven't seen it staged in the UK in over 3 decades, but with a rise in racially motivated political contention, it is perhaps the opportune moment to bring it back to the stage...

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Have you ever seen "The Piano Lesson"? Did you enjoy the show? Let me know below, or on my Instagram page.