‘The Piano Lesson’ Review: Denzel Washington Produces And His Family Brings New Life To August Wilson’s Pulitzer-Winning Stage Classic – Telluride Film Festival
deadline.comContinuing Denzel Washington‘s stated quest to bring new film versions of iconic playwright August Wilson‘s 10-play Century Cycle (aka Pittsburgh Cycle since nearly all take place in the writer’s hometown), he has now come in as producer (with Todd Black) of one of Wilson’s most celebrated works, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson, previously made as a TV movie in 1995 and in 2022 the subject of a major Broadway revival.
Finding success with his 2016 film version of Fences following its Tony-winning Broadway revival and bringing an Oscar to Viola Davis as well as Denzel’s 10th nomination, and then 2020’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, this seems like a natural move as well as a work that perhaps lends itself better than others in Wilson’s canon to a cinematic adaptation.
It has turned into a family affair this time as Denzel enlisted his son Malcolm Washington to direct as well as co-write (with Virgil Williams), and features another son John David Washington to reprise his acclaimed Broadway debut role of Boy Willie who in 1936 comes from his dull sharecropper job in Mississippi to his Uncle Doaker Charles’ (Samuel L.
Jackson) house in Pittsburgh with the intention of trying to sell the old intricately carved piano that has been a key family heirloom.
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