“The Piano Lesson” at Hartford Stage is a lesson in how to stage August Wilson properly.
Director Jade King Carroll takes a similar approach to the one she took with “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years” at the same theater last year. Both shows were grandly designed by Alexis Distler as multi-story houses, with full rooms and landings and staircases and even a view of the house next door. Both allowed the actors plenty of room to wander, pace, do chores or hover in the distant background when not sitting around and telling stories.
To some directors, this approach might seem counterintuitive. The gabfest “Having Our Say” and all of Wilson’s shows (many of which were originally workshopped and premiered in Connecticut, at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and the Yale Repertory Theatre) are intimate, talkative, combative affairs. Closeness heightens the drama. But, as this “Piano Lesson” reminds us, there’s a lot more to Wilson plays than confrontation. There are long, soulful musical interludes. There are sweaty work scenes. There are several generations of a family in one house. There’s a ghost at the top of that staircase. Here, when the sparks don’t need to fly, the cast can kick back a bit, which is just as entertaining. The play is marked with abrupt twists and turns, and this production can accommodate all of them.
Productions of “Piano Lesson” can often be categorized based on how physically handsome its cocky anti-hero, Boy Willie, is allowed to be. Does the character’s self-confidence come from good looks and God-given charisma, or is he a bit delusional about his powers of persuasion? In this case, he’s very handsome indeed, played with brash appeal and lithe ladies-man swagger by Clifton Duncan. Boy Willie bursts unexpectedly into his uncle’s home in Pittsburgh, fired up to sell the family’s most prized heirloom, a hand-carved piano, so he can buy farmland. He’s told in no uncertain terms, by any number of people — there’s that sweet August Wilson blues-like repetition setting in — that his sister Berniece is “never going to sell that piano.”
The piano — which in this case happens to be the same imposing, beautifully adorned instrument that graced “The Piano Lesson”‘s premiere production at the Yale Rep 26 years ago — sets the plot (and several musical numbers) in motion, but of course the play is about much more than piano moving. It’s about family and community and heritage, and whether those things can help or hinder a person who’s just trying to get ahead during the Great Depression. It’s about how African Americans were seen in the first half of the 20th century, and how they saw themselves.
As Doaker, an elderly man who’s doing his best to keep his niece and nephew from biting each other’s heads off, Roscoe Orman (who appeared in the original Broadway production of Wilson’s “Fences” and a couple of regional productions of the playwright’s “Jitney”) gives a fascinating, laid-back performance that neatly complements the varied rhythms of the other players. At first, given the way he stammers and repeats himself, you might wonder if Orman is forgetting his lines. But within a few minutes you’ve become acclimated to his distinctive delivery, and may forget he’s acting at all. It’s a level of naturalism few can match.
Other characters in the play are just as distinctive and believable. Christina Acosta Robinson, as Boy Willie’s long-suffering sister Berniece, has the authentic look and attitude of a single woman in the 1930s, from the way she styles her hair to how she carries herself in a nightdress. Cleavant Derricks, as the past-his-prime piano player Wining Boy, plays and sings with craft and charisma. Galen Ryan Kane, who graduated earlier this year from the Yale School of Drama, nails the tricky role of Boy Willie’s sidekick Lymon, a withdrawn young man who needs to assert himself more and more as the play goes on.
It’s a mistake to see “The Piano Lesson” as the story of Boy Willie versus Berniece, or of Doaker protecting his home. Characters who, in the hands of a lesser playwright, would be written off as comic relief or sounding boards get their own scenes, their own voices, their own feelings. This full, rich, meditative production slows down, speeds up and diverges just as it should, ending in a harmonic crescendo that links the natural with the supernatural, earthly concerns with universal ones. It makes the leap, spectacularly.
This “Piano Lesson” is a master class. Learn from it.
“THE PIANO LESSON” by August Wilson, directed by Jade King Carroll, is performed through Nov. 13 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. There are added 2 p.m. Saturday performances on Nov. 5 and 12, and added 7:30 p.m. Sunday performance on Oct. 30. There are no performances on Oct. 25. Tickets are $25 to $90. 860-527-5151, hartfordstage.org.
