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 ... Read More
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 ... Read More
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 ... Read More
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, ... 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 ... Read More
- Learn Your Lesson
- Hallmark censorship