‘The Piano Lesson’ Broadway review: A blisteringly acted drama
nypost.comopened Thursday night on Broadway, is mostly in tune. The August Wilson play’s greatest asset is its young leads John David Washington and Danielle Brooks, both of whom are already widely admired, but display an altogether new and enticing range of skills.
2 hours and 45 minutes, with one intermission. At the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St.Especially for Washington, who has been terrific in subdued roles in films such as “BlacKkKlansman” and “Tenet,” a gregarious ball of live-in-person energy like Wilson’s Boy Willie is just the ticket.Boy Willie is a sharecropper, living in 1936 with his eyes unblinking on the future, who travels up from Mississippi to see his sister Berniece (Brooks) and uncle Doaker (Samuel L.
Jackson) in Pittsburgh.He’s not in PA on vacay, though — he’s got news: Sutter, the man who owns the Mississippi land Boy Willie’s family once worked on as slaves, is dead, and Boy Willie has the chance to buy it.
But the only way he can afford the plot is by selling the cherished piano. But Berniece, adamantly, will not allow her brother to take the instrument, which is weighty not only because of its size but its past.
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