Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son, makes his feature debut with a production that, as was the case with its two predecessors, gives a supreme cast room to breathe without satisfactorily shaking off the piece’s stage origins. Once again, the drama hangs around coups de theatre that, interrupting yards of declamatory dialogue, feel too mannered for a more distancing medium. The project increasingly looks as if it is pickling the plays in aspic rather than finding them appropriate cinematic translations.
The Piano Lesson, first staged in 1987, comes complete with thumping titular metaphor. We are in the outskirts of Pittsburgh during the Great Depression. Berniece ( Danielle Deadwyler ), a black widow in middle age, lives in a rural home with her daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) and an elaborately decorated upright piano.
The action begins with her brother Boy Willy (John David Washington) and his pal Lymon (Ray Fisher) arriving in the middle of the night with a scheme that fails to much move Berniece. It involves the piano. That instrument bears a symbolic weight that would crush many less sturdy items of household furniture.
Decades earlier a local white land owner exchanged it for “one and a half” slaves – the family’s ancestors – before it was snatched by the current owners during (what else?) Fourth of July fireworks. Images of Berniece’s enslaved relatives are carved into the wood, but that doesn’t dissuade Boy Willy from asking if he can sell the pi.
