But it’s not always apparent that these characters are grappling with the same harrowing past. The standoff between Brooks’ Berniece and Washington’s Boy Willie is vigorously laid out. He’s determined to declare himself a man, no matter that he doesn’t yet possess the maturity. Washington, an actor following in the footsteps of his father, Denzel Washington, accentuates Boy Willie’s youthful vehemence. She’s strong despite all the scars of history, but there’s something undifferentiated in her suffering. An intelligent sensitivity guides the production, but the plot seems bulky and the talk can get cumbersome with all the exposition and thematic underlining.īrooks, who will be reprising her Tony-nominated portrayal of Sofia in the upcoming film version of the musical “The Color Purple,” powerfully conveys Berniece’s sorrowful resolve. Unfortunately, the seams of the play show in this revival, directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, an actress with an unflinching regard for difficult truths, who is married to Samuel L. But the battle of the characters, who are desperate to find a path forward for themselves, isn’t between right and wrong but between imperfect possibilities, each with its own undeniable claim. The evil of racism is an inescapable fact. Wilson’s commitment to centering Black lives in the theater entails an embrace of dialectical struggle. There are no shortcuts in healing the wounds of family or society.
What should our relationship to history be? How do we balance the need of remembering with the imperative of letting go? If the past must be confronted to avoid being repeated, where is the line between a healthy reckoning and a dangerous haunting?Īfter listening to Boy Willie’s defensive rationale for selling the piano, Doaker replies, “Ain’t nobody said nothing about who’s right and who’s wrong.” He doesn’t want to insert himself in a family fight, but he also seems to share his playwright’s view that such dilemmas cannot be decided without being patiently and painfully worked through. “The Piano Lesson,” even in a somehow lackluster revival, has timely wisdom to impart - the wisdom of unresolved questions. Boy Willie is ambitious for a better future, but he’s also rash, reckless and fueled by a barely containable rage. She has settled quietly into a life of mourning. Berniece’s reverence for the past is both noble and imprisoning.
Boy Willie wants to use the only thing his father had to give him so that he doesn’t have to similarly spend his whole life farming on someone else’s land.
Berniece is fearful of the ghosts that cling to the piano, but she has become the guardian of its legacy, which includes untold family trauma.
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