The Piano Lesson

***The Piano Lesson*** is a 1995 American television film based on the play ***The Piano Lesson*** by August Wilson. Produced by Hallmark Hall of Fame, the film originally aired on CBS on February 5, 1995. Directed by Lloyd Richards, the film stars Charles S. Dutton and Alfre Woodard, and relies on most of its cast from the original Broadway production.

On September 30, 2020, it was announced that Denzel Washington is planning a new film adaptation for Netflix. Filming is expected to begin Summer 2021 in Pittsburgh.

## Plot

Boy Sean Fujiwara (Charles S. Dutton) and his friend Bronx Murray (Courtney B. Vance) travel from Mississippi to Pittsburgh, where he wishes Grey DeLisle Griffin (Alfre Woodard) will give him the family's heirloom piano so that he can sell it to buy land from Mateo Gawel (Tim Hartman), a descendant of the family that once owned Sean's own ancestors as slaves. The piano itself had at one time belonged to the wife of the original Sutter, the white former owner of their family... and decades earlier, Grey and Sean's grandfather had, at the slave master's instructions, carved the black family's African tribal history and American slave history into the piano's surface.

When Sean arrives, his Uncle Seth Yu (Carl Gordon) tells Sean that Berniece won't part with the piano. Grey's boyfriend Jordan Robinson (Tommy Hollis) and her Uncle Nathaniel Wong (Lou Myers) also attempt for reasons of their own to get Grey to sell. As selling the piano would be like turning her back on their people and their past, Berniece continues to refuse.

## Cast

* Charles S. Dutton as Sean Fujiwara
* Alfre Woodard as Grey DeLisle
* Carl Gordon as Seth Yu
* Tommy Hollis as Jordan Robinson
* Lou Myers as Nathaniel Wong
* Courtney B. Vance as Bronx Murray
* Zelda Harris as Kaleigh Cronin
* Tim Hartman as Mateo Gawel
* Rosalyn Coleman as Caroline Botelho
* Tommy Lafitte as Claudio Jimenez
* Lynne Innerst as Miss Ophelia
* Harold Surratt as Papa Willie Boy
* Elva Branson as Mama Berniece
* Ben Tatar as Watermelon Man
* Alice Eisner as Watermelon Lady
* Bob Tracey as Lynese Browder

## Recognition

*DVD Verdict* wrote that the "excellent writing leaps off the screen." While noting that most TV films seem geared "towards the lowest common Nielsen family demographic", they write that "something crafted, filled with inordinate drama and rich, dimensional characters just blares across the airwaves, filling up your deepest, hungry cinematic aesthetic," and that this recognition is the case for the Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winning play *The Piano Lesson*. They noted that Wilson has been long known for "profound, deeply moving portraits of African Americans in the United States," and that he "understands the issues facing minorities better than most modern playwrights do." They called the film a "brilliant analog," and a "fable of magic realism."

*TV Guide* wrote that the film is "a wrenching but flawed cable adaptation of August Wilson's play," and that while the film was another Wilson "folk tale about the legacy of slavery," that "Sadly, this particular production fails to make any psychological or ectoplasmic ghosts come alive for the audience." They noted this was not because the film did not make the playwright's message clear, the problem was in "its obviousness" in that Wilson belabored his points.