Amazon.com: The only one of August Wilson's plays to be filmed (and for television, at that), this 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winner is an amazing piece of work. Adapted by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, who staged it on Broadway, the play deals not just with racism and its effects but with the ongoing legacy and curse of slavery on modern blacks. Set in 1920s Pittsburgh, the story deals with the arrival of Boy Willie (Charles Dutton) from Mississippi, to claim a family heirloom from his sister Berniece (Alfre Woodard): the piano, carved by their ancestors with symbols of slavery. He wants to sell it to buy the land his grandfather worked as a slave; Berniece refuses to give it up because it represents a horrifying episode from the family's past. Add in ghosts, superb performances, and Wilson's poetically charged writing, and you have a startlingly solid piece of theater that works well as a film. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Learn Your Lesson
August Wilson's 'The Piano Player' with Charles Dutton and Alfre Woodard is such an engrossing play. This screen adaption brings you into there lives and makes you feel for every one in the movie. The writing 'superb'. The acting 'superb'. And the supporting cast is so top notch, you have to watch it more than once just to see all the scene stealers. This is a group that can send a complete message with just the raising of an eye, the shrugging of a shoulder, or the shaking of a head. You know what every gesture means. I now need 'Fences'.
Rating: - "As long as Sutters had that piano, they had us as slaves."
Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, August Wilson's lively domestic drama focuses on a black family in the 1930s and their piano, which dominates the living room of Doaker Charles and his niece Berniece in Pittsburgh. The piano is adorned with the faces of their slave ancestors, carved by a distant relation who was owned by the Sutter family in Mississippi before Emancipation. Berniece's brother Boy Willie, recently released from a prison farm, has come to Pittsburgh from Mississippi with his friend Lymon, determined to sell this ancient piano in which he claims half-ownership.
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Rating: - A battle between the historic past and dreams for the future
If you are seriously into dramatic theatre plays, you may agree that re-creations made for movies or televisions are often substandard to the book! In this case, the re-creation was geared toward television/movie quality rather than a reproduction of a stage theatre performance.
And if you are familiar with the works of August Wilson, you will recognize that to adher to the vernacular - spoken language of a region - is critical to the element of his works. In this DVD movie, the use of the N word was omitted and that omission is part of history.
Rating: - Hallmark censorship
An already posted review claims that this TV version is true to August Wilson's play. Only partly--and the differences are almost certainly attributable to Hallmark. Wilson adapted his own original stage script, but this version is shorter than the original (which may be a good thing--Wilson does like to let his characters gab) and the language is very different. For example, the nice, politically correct folks who want to sell greeting cards at Hallmark no doubt forced Wilson to remove the numerous instances of the word "ni____" from his play. Some other "rough" language (which can now be heard ... Read More
Rating: - A Lesson of My Own
I teach language arts, including drama, at a rural high school. I read "The Piano Lesson" and was hoping for a film version that I could show to my students to go along with their reading. This film is true to the play and shows viewers what happens when we don't carry on family traditions and make good use of the gifts and talents we have. The cast and production crew have done a marvelous job of creating a compelling version of this Pulitzer Prize winning play. I highly recommend it for its many levels of enjoyment and learning.
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