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Sutter fell down a well, and he may or may not have been assisted in that fall by Boy Willie.Berniece and her daughter live with her uncle Doaker, a cook for the railroad. It focuses on a frequent literary device--a family feud over money, land, or personal property. The ghost of Sutter is present at times in the play, and later his spirit plays a pivotal role. Berniece and her brother Boy Willie are battling over possession of the piano.
It's about as far from Absurdist theater as you can get.Wilson created real people in a believable setting. Boy Willie with his buddy, ne'er-do-well Lymon, has brought a truckload of watermelons up from the South to Pittsburgh to peddle, hoping to sell them and also sell the family piano so he can buy a spread of land down South.This story takes place in the 1930's when the blacks are still living in a South where white people oppressed blacks and where no law existed to intervene for blacks. Boy Willie wants a white man's land, Sutter's spread. "The Piano Lesson" (1990) by the late August Wilson is part of his ten-play series, the Pittsburg Cycle or the Century Cycle. There's a touching homey quality to the play.One of my favorite haunts in Manhattan is the Edison Café, a diner-type restaurant off the lobby in the Edison Hotel on 47th Street. Various characters such as Wining Boy play the piano briefly and there are occasional songs.
As the action of the play continues, all sorts of family memories and history are revealed. August Wilson was a risk-taker who asked audiences to come along with him as he dealt with questions of ownership, possession, and family disputes while at the same time presenting a very accessible story with flashes of humor, large doses of humanity, and a dramatic structure with a beginning, middle and end.
Fondly known as the Polish Tea Room by its habitués, this was where Wilson was reputed to have written notes for three of his plays on restaurant napkins. In this case it's a piano that has carved into its surface a history of the family.
There's a vibrance and a vitality to the people and a sound dramatic structure with a good set-up, development and climax. He is the voice of reason.
She is seeing Avery who wants to set up a church and is the voice of religion and prophecy. They are not phony people or cardboard figures.
The struggle between brother and sister, Boy Willie and Berneice, over this family heirloom is more than just an exercise in the productive use of the unused piano but points to the importance of trying to preserve memory in a world that does not cherish such notions. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in "Fences" when he (correctly) stated that there should been "no too early" in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. In "The Piano Lesson" no one phrase sticks out as much as the story surrounding the history of the piano, the carvings engraved in it and the historical memories of slave, slave-owner and the scars of slavery's harm on black life in the 1930's (and the 2000's). For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can.
Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terkel interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson's work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of "Gem Of The Ocean" (the first play chronologically in the cycle).In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom as means to survive in racially-hardened America. Once again, kudos Brother Wilson. The ill-fated King Hedleys, I and II, and Troy Maxtons of the world (characters in other Wilson plays in this cycle) deserve no less.
Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. This is not the best play in the Wilson cycle by a long shot but, as always, there is plenty of food for thought for anyone who has confronted this issue. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson's Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Slavery times, and Jim Crow times, and de facto segregation times and, unfortunately now, in so-called "post-racial" times demand the preservation of such memory.
'The Piano Lesson' is a play that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. We had the pleasure of seeing director Ed Smith's staging of 'The Piano Lesson' at the Jubilee Theatre in Fort Worth, TX. It's a must-see for any fan of good theater. A fine director and cast finds the energy and humor in August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1990 work. It was brilliant - Boy Willie, Wining Boy, Doaker, Lyman - what great characters. August Wilson has created a treasure trove of American originals.
As we expect from a writer of Wilson's caliber, "The Piano Lesson" is full of family tension, careful nuance, buried secrets, and stirring revelations. She makes some interesting points about the difference between reading a play as literature, and seeing it performed on the stage. The Charles family must resolve whether it belongs to them, a monument to loved ones long gone, or whether its monetary value can pave the way to a productive future of ownership on the land where they once were slaves.The fourth play in Wilson's "Century Cycle," and the fifth written, turns on the question of whether it is nobler to honor the past or look to the future. As the last living memory of American slavery gives way to the hurlyburly of the Twentieth Century, the Charles family piano straddles the line between the two. I recommend reading this play as a literary gem and as a great piece of American culture. The threads suddenly wrap up very neatly in a way that feels sudden and unearned.The TCG hardback includes an introduction by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.
And the conclusion is too abrupt.
The dialog also sings with the stunning passion of African American folk language, in a music comparable to David Mamet, but distinctively Wilson's own.My problem with the play is the second act.
Concise and insightful, Morrison's intro is almost as worth a read as the play itself.This play is of value both as a part of Wilson's magnum opus and as a literary gem in its own right.
Not just a musical instrument, it's a work of visual art.
She's right to say that details which can only be alluded to onstage--such as Lymon's truck or Sutter's ghost--become more real when read off the page.
Act One is unified, tightly structured, and although it appears slow moving, every line of dialog is packed with insight.
But Act Two breaks down into a number of short scenes, looser in structure, at least one of which (II.iv) could probably be removed without damaging the play.
But that value is packed almost entirely into Act One.
But be aware that, like most literature, it is imperfect, and the greatness that creates the play is what makes its shortcomings all the more visible.
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