‘The Piano Lesson’ Broadway Review: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington & Danielle Brooks Rouse The Ghosts In A Spirited Revival
deadline.comThere’s abundant magic still in The Piano Lesson, August Wilson’s grand, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning tale of a Black family torn between legacy and ambition, the past and the future, and, it’s not an overstatement to note, between life and death.
In the new beautifully performed production opening on Broadway tonight at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, first-time Broadway director LaTanya Richardson Jackson unveils a great deal of that magic – and not always in the places you’d expect.
Yes, there are the flashes of the supernatural visitations and omens that the playwright mined from Blues mythology and African American folklore, but the magic Jackson conjures from her cast is one of the most impressive displays currently on Broadway.
Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman, Amsterdam), and Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black, the upcoming film adaptation of The Color Purple) are only the most obvious names to mention first – that’s some considerable Hollywood star power – and the three turn in performances so thoroughly embedded in Wilson’s idiosyncratic universe of the earthbound -= where money and death and grudges and family ties and maybe murder are the stuff of the everyday – and the otherworldly, with vengeful spirits and beloved ancestors demanding to be heard.
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