PLAYBACK:stl
By Andrea Braun
The resolution might seem simple enough—it’s understandable to want to serve no more masters—but it’s complicated.
August Wilson was an angry man and that was one of the qualities that fueled his greatness as a playwright. The son of a black mother (whose last name he took when his white father died), he identified with his African roots much more strongly than he did his German ones. Among his works are 10 plays (called variously the “Century Plays” or the “Pittsburgh Cycle”) crafted to articulate the black experience in 20th century America—decade by decade, though not written in order—to those who were living it and those who dwelt in that other world: white America. He didn’t pull punches. The Piano Lesson is the “1930s” play, and it focuses on the Charles family, two of whom are living in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where Wilson himself grew up, and one visiting who still lives in Mississippi.
Doaker Charles (Robert A. Mitchell) and his widowed niece, Berniece (Sharisa Watley), share the home, along with Berniece’s 11-year-old daughter, Maretha (Carli Officer). Early one morning in July 1937, Boy Willie (Ronald L. Conner) and his friend Lymon (Chauncy Thomas) wake the house, as they announce their arrival up from Mississippi with a truckload of watermelons to sell. However, Boy Willie’s real mission is to remove a piano from his sister Berniece’s keeping so he can sell it to buy his own farmland and stop sharecropping. This plan does not meet with Berniece’s approval because this isn’t just any old upright. The instrument is intricately carved with renderings of their forbearers.
His brothers, Boy Willie and Berniece’s great-grandfather, the original Boy Charles, did the artwork on the piano. The Sutter family who owned the instrument also owned him. His wife and their grandson, nine years old at the time, were traded away by Mr. Sutter, but his wife really missed the two, so Sutter had his slave render their faces to comfort her, and he kept adding to the carvings to the point that it became a kind family totem. Years later, Boy Charles, the son of the former nine-year-old, felt like the piano was his family’s by right, since their faces were all over it, and one night, he and his brothers Doaker and Wining Boy (Ethan H. Jones) stole it. When the crime was discovered, his house was set on fire, and when he tried to escape by boxcar, that too was burned, killing him and several others. Doaker and Wining Boy managed to get the piano to safety. Soon after, the men responsible for killing those in the box car began to mysteriously fall in their own wells. The latest victim is the current generation’s Mr. Sutter, and Berniece is convinced Boy Willie was the culprit, while he insists he was not.
Berniece is suspicious of Boy Willie anyway because she blames him for getting her husband, Crawley, killed for committing a minor crime together. She’s still grieving, and she naturally doesn’t trust her brother. It doesn’t take much, therefore, to set them at odds about the relative importance of the piano versus Boy Willie’s urge to be his own boss. The resolution might seem simple enough—it’s understandable to want to serve no more masters—but it’s complicated by the fact that Boy Willie has not only proven that he is irresponsible in the past, but there’s no indication that he’s not talking big and meaning little this time either. Still, he is determined to get the piano, no matter what it takes, and some fine comic moments are provided by his and Lymon’s attempt to lift it. But, as often happens in Wilson’s plays, there is a supernatural aspect central to the action: Mr. Sutter’s ghost is appearing around the house. Doaker saw him first, but didn’t say anything, then Berniece was frightened by him (blaming Boy Willie for stirring him up), and young Maretha was scared out of sleeping upstairs anymore because of the apparition.
Meanwhile, Boy Willie and Lymon continue to have trouble with their truck, which delays them. They have to sell enough watermelons to have room for the piano, too. Berniece is being courted by another native Mississippian, Avery (Robert Lee Davis III), who is a self-declared preacher trying to get a bank loan to establish a church he believed God required of him in a dream. The story of that dream is worth the price of admission, by the way. Wining Boy happens to be in town and he’s busy drinking, borrowing money from his brother, and taking advantage of the naïve Lymon whose main interest seems to be women. Candice Jeanine has a nice turn as the object of both his and Boy Willie’s fleeting affections. But unlike Boy Willie, Lymon intends to stay in Pittsburgh and seek his fortune up north. He is 29, but seems younger. He has almost a childlike charm about him, and Thomas is terrific in the part. Everyone here is very good, but Thomas pulls the focus whenever he’s around.
Wilson said he was creating a female counterpoint for Troy Maxson (the garbageman protagonist in Fences, the “1950s” play, and the other Pulitzer Prize winner besides this one in the cycle) and to the extent that she is the strongest-willed, surest figure in the play, he does. But Boy Willie is the one who makes the most profound impression on us and personifies the playwright’s beliefs through his obstinacy, big dreams, old resentments, and singular focus. He is the angry black man in this world, while Lymon is sweetly oblivious, Doaker is resigned, Avery’s found God, and Wining Boy is lost in the bottom of a glass. Boy Willie seems the most like Troy, as a younger man, anyway, before he has become so embittered that he fears success for his son because accomplishment for a black man, even in sports, will hurt him in the end. Boy Willie, he’s not at that point yet, but might it come?
So, who wins? You should go find out. As is the case with most of Wilson’s plays, this is a little over two and a half hours long, but you probably won’t notice that, and it’s time well-spent. It’s a good-looking production, too. Daryl Harris’s costumes are just right for each character’s personality. There are so many details to the surreal set and lighting (Tim Case, Jim Burwinkel) where the shadows of the ancestors appear when things get spooky. Lorna Littleway’s direction maintains the delicate balance of the situation and within the relationships. The piano’s lessons about race and class; the value of memory; the importance of family past, present, and future; spirituality and spirit in all its incarnations are clear by the end, though you may want to think a little bit more on ghosts. In 2013, The Piano Lesson, first presented 21 years ago by the Black Rep to inaugurate the Grandel Theatre where the company still resides, is truly impressive. |Andrea Braun
The Piano Lesson runs through Feb. 2, 2013, at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Center. Visitwww.theblackrep.org for more information, including tickets and showtimes.
STLTODAY
Black Rep returns to August Wilson with ‘Piano Lesson
But when it stages plays by the late August Wilson, there’s a different mood. The 10 plays of his Pittsbugh Cycle, in which he explored the African-American experience through each decade of the 20th century, come with a frisson of intimacy that makes the words a little richer and the relationships a little deeper.
Over the years, the Black Rep has staged all the Pittsburgh Cycle plays at least once. Now, as its 36th season opens with “The Piano Lesson,” the Black Rep’s relationship with Wilson retains its special character, rich and deep.
Guided by director Lorna Littleway, the play has a cluster of memorable characters whose ties are strong, complicated and not entirely open to rational explanation.
“The Piano Lesson” takes place during the 1930s in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where Wilson grew up. The GreatDepression hurts everyone, but Doaker (Robert Mitchell) and his family get by. He works for the railroad, and his niece, Berniece (Sharisa Whatley), a young widow, cleans houses. A preacher (Robert Lee Davis III) wants to marry her, but her daughter, Maretha (Carli Officer), is the focus of all her dreams. Maybe she’ll grow up to be a teacher.
Visitors upset the equilibrium. Doaker’s jazz-loving brother Wining Boy (Ethan H. Jones), shows up after a long absence, and Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (Ronald L. Conner) arrives from Mississippi with his naive pal Lymon (Chauncy Thomas). The two of them have brought a truckload of Delta melons to sell — and Boy Willie has brought big plans, as well.
The family keeps a valuable heirloom, a piano lavishly carved by Doaker’s grandfather when he was enslaved. Now Boy Willie wants to sell it buy a little piece of land to farm — the same land his ancestors worked for their master. But Berniece has no intention of letting the piano go.
Spanning only three days, the drama revolves around their quarrel. But there are elaborations and side issues, just as there are in most family discussions.
Littleway has a good feel for this material, although on opening night not everyone had the lines down cold and almost everyone needed to pay more attention to diction. But she makes the most of every inch of Tim Case’s generous set (dramatically lit by Jim Burwinkel), giving just the actors singular moments to shine.
Jones, in a vivacious turn, dresses Thomas in flashy “city” clothes; Mitchell precisely measures drinks for his guests but merrily prepares his own lunchbox; Davis vividly recounts a dream. In the play’s most thrilling moment, Mitchell, Conner, Jones and Thomas join in a powerful work song. Without a hint of lecture, it implies all the ties, practical and historical, that bind this family together.
But Whatley gives the play its beating heart. Cannily keeping the preacher at a distance, carefully braiding her daughter’s hair, adamant with her brother, she portrays Berniece as a shrewd woman, calibrating her behavior for every situation.
Only Lymon can catch her off-guard, in a tender scene that throbs with feelings they didn’t know they had. When he delicately touches the back of her neck, you can almost feel her tremble.
Conner is just as effective, demonstrating that despite his name, Boy Willie is a man. He’s protective with Maretha, seductive with a date (Candice Jeanine), businesslike with Doaker. His plan to work his own farm sounds reasonable.
But, unlike Berniece, Boy Willie underestimates the cost. By the end of the play, with its intimations of ties that span generations, Wilson’s surrealistic story presents family connections in a way that feels new yet very, very old.
THE VITAL VOICE
By Andrea Braun
The Piano Lesson @ The Black Rep
TELL THEM BOY WILLIE IS HERE – PHOTO BY: STEWART M. GOLDSTEIN
August Wilson was an angry man and that was one of the qualities that fueled his greatness as a playwright. The son of a black mother (whose last name he took when his white father died), he identified with his African roots much more strongly than he did his German ones.
Among his works are 10 plays (called variously the “Century Plays” or the “Pittsburgh Cycle”) crafted to articulate the black experience in 20th century America—decade by decade, though not written in order—to those who were living it and those who dwelt in that other world, white America. He didn’t pull punches. The Piano Lesson is the “1930s” play, and it focuses on the Charles family, two of whom are living in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where Wilson himself grew up, and one visiting who still lives in Mississippi.
Doaker Charles (Robert A. Mitchell) and his widowed niece, Berniece (Sharisa Watley) share the home, along with Berniece’s 11-year-old daughter, Maretha (Carli Officer). Early one morning in July, 1937, Boy Willie (Ronald L. Conner) and his friend Lymon (Chauncy Thomas) wake the house as they announce their arrival up from Mississippi with a truckload of watermelons to sell. However, Boy Willie’s real mission is to remove a piano from his sister Berniece’s keeping so he can sell it to buy his own farmland and stop sharecropping. This plan does not meet with Berniece’s approval because this isn’t just any old upright. The instrument is intricately carved with renderings of their forbearers. His brothers.
Boy Willie and Berniece’s great-grandfather, the original Boy Charles, did the artwork on the piano. The Sutter family who owned the instrument also owned him. His wife and their grandson, 9 years old at the time, were traded away by Mr. Sutter, but his wife really missed the two, so Sutter had his slave render their faces to comfort her, and he kept adding to the carvings to the point that it became a kind family totem. Years later, Boy Charles, the son of the 9-year-old, felt like the piano was his family’s by rights, since their faces were all over it, and one night, he and his brothers Doaker and Wining Boy (Ethan H. Jones) stole it. When the crime was discovered, his house was set on fire, and when he tried to escape by boxcar, that too was burned, killing him and several others. Doaker and Wining Boy managed to get the piano to safety. Soon after, the men responsible for killing those in the box car began to mysteriously fall in their own wells. The latest victim is the current generation’s Mr. Sutter, and Berniece is convinced Boy Willie was the culprit, while he insists he was not.
Berniece is suspicious of Boy Willie anyway because she blames him for getting her husband, Crawley, killed for committing a minor crime together. She’s still grieving, and she naturally doesn’t trust her brother. It doesn’t take much, therefore, to set them at odds about the relative importance of the piano versus Boy Willie’s urge to be his own boss. The resolution might seem simple enough—it’s understandable to want to serve no more masters, but it’s complicated by the fact that Boy Willie has not only proven that he is irresponsible in the past, but there’s no indication that he’s not talking big and meaning little this time either. Still, he is determined to get the piano, no matter what it takes, and some fine comic moments are provided by his and Lymon’s attempt to lift it. But, as often happens in Wilson’s plays, there is a supernatural aspect central to the action: Mr. Sutter’s ghost is appearing around the house. Doaker saw him first, but didn’t say anything, then Berniece was frightened by him (blaming Boy Willie for stirring him up), and young Maretha was scared out of sleeping upstairs anymore because of the apparition.
Meanwhile, Boy Willie and Lymon continue to have trouble with their truck, which delays them. They have to sell enough watermelons to have room for the piano too. Berniece is being courted by another native Mississippian, Avery (Robert Lee Davis III) who is a self-declared preacher trying to get a bank loan to establish a church he believed God required of him in a dream. The story of that dream is worth the price of admission, by the way. Wining Boy happens to be in town, and he’s busy drinking, borrowing money from his brother, and taking advantage of the naïve Lymon whose main interest seems to be women. Candice Jeanine has a nice turn as the object of both his and Boy Willie’s fleeting affections. But unlike Boy Willie, Lymon intends to stay in Pittsburgh and seek his fortune up north. He is 29, but seems younger. He has almost a childlike charm about him, and Thomas is terrific in the part. Everyone here is very, good, but Thomas pulls the focus whenever he’s around.
Wilson said he was creating a female counterpoint for Troy Maxson (the garbageman protagonist in Fences, the “1950s” play, and the other Pulitzer Prize winner besides this one in the cycle) and to the extent that she is the strongest-willed, surest figure in the play, he does. But Boy Willie is the one who makes the most profound impression on us and personifies the playwright’s beliefs through his obstinacy, big dreams, old resentments, and singular focus. He is the angry black man in this world, while Lymon is sweetly oblivious, Doaker is resigned, Avery’s found God, and Wining Boy is lost in the bottom of a glass. Boy Willie seems the most like Troy, as a younger man, anyway, before he has become so embittered that he fears success for his son because accomplishment for a black man, even in sports, will hurt him in the end. Boy Willie, he’s not at that point yet, but might it come?
So, who wins? You should go find out. As is the case with most of Wilson’s plays, this is a little over 2 ½ hours long, but you probably won’t notice that, and it’s time well-spent. It’s a good looking production too. Daryl Harris’s costumes are just right for each character’s personality. There are so many details to the surreal set and lighting (Tim Case, Jim Burwinkel) where the shadows of the ancestors appear when things get spooky. Lorna Littleway’s direction maintains the delicate balance of the situation and within the relationships. The piano’s lessons about race and class, the value of memory, the importance of family past, present and future, spirituality and spirit in all its incarnations are clear by the end, though you may want to think a little bit more on ghosts. In 2013, The Piano Lesson, first presented 21 years ago by the Black Rep to inaugurate the Grandel where the company still resides, is truly impressive.
The Piano Lesson runs through Feb. 2, 2013 at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Center. You may contact www.theblackrep.org.
THE ST. LOUIS AMERICAN
By Kenya Vaughn
Final weekend for ‘Piano Lesson’ at The Black Rep
The Black Rep’s Piano Lesson
Sharissa Whatley and Ron Connor star in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson – which kicked off The Black Rep’s 36th Season.
The Black Rep will close its run of the August Wilson classic The Piano Lesson at the Grandel Theatre this Sunday. The Pulitzer Prize winning play is among the iconic playwright’s “cycle” body of work that captures black life throughout the 20th century.
Set in the 1930s, The Piano Lesson features the complexities of The Great Migration, The GreatDepression and a family dynamic impacted by the bitter injustices imposed upon blacks in the south – and their journey to move beyond them towards a better life.
Starring Ron Connor, Sharisa Whatley and Bob Mitchell, the Black Rep stages a respectable adaptation of The Piano Lesson under the direction of Lorna Littleway.
Much like Wilson’s Gem of The Ocean, he uses legacy, lineage and supernatural connections to draw the audience in to an experience that could be applied to the millions of Great Migration narratives that reshaped the landscape of urban America. Wilson uses his native Pittsburgh as the backdrop for the pioneers of what would become the common denominator for families who would populate most of inner cities throughout the country.
His ability to invoke life through his literary genius is ever present in The Piano Lesson. And for the most part The Black Rep’s ensemble delivers the promise of Wilson’s words as a brother and sister struggle to come to terms with a family heirloom that is haunted by the blood and ghosts of an ugly history. The sister wants to honor the family by holding on – while the brother is determined that letting go and moving forward is the only option for the family to have future prosperity.
As Black History Month kicks off, The Black Rep’s first show of their 36/20 season is an ideal opportunity to celebrate the gifts and contributions of African Americans in the arts – and live experience of African American history.
The Black Rep’s production of August Wilson’s Piano Lesson continues through Sunday – with shows tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are available through metrotix at (314) 534-1111. For more information, visit www.theblackrep.org.
