The Washington Family Adapts August Wilson

In August Wilson’s “The Piano” — revived on Broadway in 2022, carefully adapted for the screen by Malcolm Washington with much the same cast — Berniece hasn’t played the piano since her mother died. It simply sits in her living room, reminding her of all that her parents, and their parents before them, endured so that future generations could be free. In literary terms, the piano is a powerful and not-so-subtle symbol, the object that represents her family’s achievement and sacrifice. The faces of her ancestors are etched into the polished wood surface of this precious heirloom.

Berniece has a brother named Boy Willie, who shows up at her house early in the play with a plan. Boy Willie thinks he can make enough money by selling the piano (and a truckload of watermelons he parked outside) to buy some of the land his family once worked as slaves on. He believes the piano belongs to him as much as it does to Berniece, and that it is what their parents would have wanted. But the past is present in “The Piano,” which is set in 1936, but is haunted by history. Upstairs lurks the ghost of the white man whose family “owned” theirs, and from whom their father stole the all-important piano.

Starring Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington as the siblings, “The Piano” poses a dilemma: One wants to move on, the other refuses to let go of what came before. While most of the actors are the same as those on Broadway, the film is undeniably Deadwyler’s show. With “The Piano,” Wilson wrote one of the great female roles of his career, and in Deadwyler, we have a heroine who burns even when she’s silent, finding layers that even the writer couldn’t have anticipated — which helps, because there’s a stilted quality to much of the dialogue.

When Boy Willie and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) arrive, seemingly having it all figured out, Berniece is upstairs in bed. Their Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson, in one of his best, and least explosive, film performances) sizes them up and laughs: “Berniece’s not selling that piano.” Every time she looks at the instrument, Berniece sees the tears her mother shed over it. Her father died for the piano, hunted by a white mob and burned alive after “retrieving” it with two accomplices three decades earlier. The heist, if you can call it that, opens the film, lit by the glow of red, white, and blue fireworks. It’s a choice that makes the film instantly cinematic, while traumatic flashbacks later in the film serve to open up Wilson’s one-room play.

Given that “The Piano” deals with themes of family legacy, it makes sense that another family came together to make it happen. As you might have guessed, Malcolm Washington — making his feature film directorial debut — is the son of screen legend Denzel Washington, who found one of his big breaks in another Wilson adaptation, “Fences.” John David Washington, who also played Boy Willie in the Broadway version, is seven years older than his brother Malcolm, whose twin sister Katia joins Denzel as producers on the film.

One might speculate about how the film’s themes resonate with the Washingtons, though “The Piano” has a universality unique among Wilson’s 10 Pittsburgh-set plays — the “Century Cycle,” in which the playwright captured the full range of African-American successes and struggles, one play per decade. While all 10 plays are performed regularly on stages across America, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Piano” covers the longest span of time, drawing the spirits of previous generations into the tableau — not just Sutter’s ghost, who lurks upstairs, but the family members whose faces appear on the heirloom.

Although set in the 1930s, the film evokes decades of progress, contrasting those who stayed in Mississippi and other southern states (represented here by the character Boy Willie) with those who participated in the Great Migration to the North, like Berniece and her daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith). It critiques a racist system of incarceration, as experienced by Boy Willie, and the even darker legacy of vigilante justice, which claimed the lives not only of their father but also of Berniece’s husband, Crawley (whose story is less clearly explained).

Most importantly, “The Piano” personifies the white men who possessed or oppressed their families in the form of Sutter, who haunts them to this day. We’re told the old bigot fell into a well, but Berniece suspects his brother must have pushed him. Boy Willie insists it was the “yellow dog ghosts,” introducing another supernatural dimension to the plot. Malcolm Washington gives us Sutter’s ghost, but leaves any other vengeful forces to our imagination. Instead, it sticks mostly to the living room, where Doaker and his old friend Wining Boy (a terrific Michael Potts) swap stories. The two also sing, bringing new life to a film so preoccupied with the past.

Ultimately, “The Piano” feels more talky than it needs to be, given all the visual elements Wilson worked with in Washington: There’s the ghost upstairs, but also the spirits watching over the family via the piano. The film comes alive when Lymon buys a new silk suit and follows the young men downtown to the Hill District’s legendary Crawford Grill. Boy Willie has his ideas for the future, but Berniece has options, too, as the ambitious pastor (Corey Hawkins) reluctantly agrees to bless her home. It’ll take more than that to rid the ghost. If Sutter represents the psychological trauma that still possesses their family, then ancestral music is the force that can free them.