Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival presents August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson

Set in 1936 Pittsburgh, the fourth play in Wilson’s Century Cycle follows the generational trauma of the Charles Doaker family. While the play's overarching theme includes a good old-fashioned southern ghost story, the core plot surrounds the vicious cycle of slavery covertly recreated within African American families. Berniece (Jessica Johnson) and her Uncle Doaker (Kash Goins) are financially stable and co-own a house. However, her brother Boy Willie (Akeem Davis) and his friend Lymon (Christopher James Murray) remain hungry for upward mobility. Boy Willie believes he can only achieve success by selling the family's ancestral piano without his sister's permission. The script smartly addresses generational wealth, trauma patterns, and socioeconomic uncertainty.

An impeccable production

It’s rare when I have no critical notes in a review. In 2024, I critiqued PSF’s ambitious staging of The Color Purple for occasionally blunting emotional turmoil with humor. But this production is impeccable. The smooth, perfectly rehearsed cast has amazing synergy, with palpable energy even when one stands center stage for a monologue.

Davis’s Boy Willie perfectly rocks the gregarious charm of an aspirational up-and-coming hustler, easily filling the stage. Murray embodies Lymon’s aw shucks salt-of-the-earth survivalist mentality. Terrence Clowe captures Wining Boy’s old-school shyster ways, and his strut is EVERYTHING. Johnnie Hobbs III perfectly portrays the ambitious yet socially conservative preacher. Leonice Diaz is ideally cast as Berniece’s daughter Maretha and has her own humorous moment. No stage moment is wasted—I loved the object work in Johnson’s act two Black haircare moment. The actors play off of each other so well, especially in the silent communication between Davis and Murray.

Masters at work

Wilson is the master of slowly building familial tension, and Ijames maintains the text’s steady beats and quiet pauses. His production’s sedate pacing allows the characters (and the audience) to marinate in deep emotional pools without undercutting the sorrow or hustling to a new scene. The text gets the room it needs to address the post-slavery resonances within a Depression-era Black American household, in an emotionally grounded in-the-round staging that organically fills the space (there’s a lovely moment post-intermission where Doaker prepares for work as the audience files in).

Thom Weaver’s spectral lighting, perfectly broken-in costumes by Jerrilyn Lanier Duckworth, sound by Liz Filious, and the carved furniture of Weaver’s set all contribute to a cohesive experience.

Feminist themes?

For a play written in the 1980s and set in the 30s, Piano Lesson shows Wilson’s sensitivity toward women forced into marriage by social dictates. Although light on female roles, the script captures patriarchal expectations (Grace, the only other adult woman character, played here by Jessica Money, remains a temporary rotating love interest for Lyman and Boy Willie). For most of the play, Berniece remains silent while the men peacock, monologue, and strut.

This showcases a dynamic I witnessed in my own family, where the matriarchs remained the stable financial influence around which the outspoken male members circulated. Berniece has a great life, a steady job, and her own home. Although all of the men rely on her financially, including her love interest, they still simultaneously imply she’s empty without a man and requires marital support.

I want Berniece to have her own grandstanding moment outside of her male relatives or her male sexual relationships, but Wilson does give her a strong act two monologue about the gendered double standard: “You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me—without a woman—and still be a man.”

While I wish Wilson had also given Berniece a monologue at the conclusion that more clearly spells out how matriarchal influences can help undo patriarchal trauma (my only note for this Pulitzer-winning play), he at least shows it.

America’s chance to take a page from August Wilson

Wilson’s ability to capture Black American culture at each decade of the 20th century makes him a literary icon and a classic American writer. I encourage everyone to see this PSF production: a classic American text perfectly brought to life is what art is all about. The Piano Lesson breaks bonds of generational trauma and systemic oppression. I hope our country can take a page from Wilson’s craft and learn to do the same.

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