August Wilson's The Piano Lesson well played at Court Theatre

May 19, 3:54 PMChicago Theatre Review ExaminerCatey Sullivan

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Photos by Michael Brosilow. Top: Brian Weddington left) and Ronald Conner. Center: Weddington. Bottom: Connor, Tyla Abercrumbie (back) and China Gray

It is as close to a can’t miss combo as you’re apt to see in Chicago’s theatrosphere: Director Ron OJ Parson, leading man AC Smith and playwright August Wilson. And sure enough, that triumvirate of talent creates something wonderful in the Court Theatre’s production of The Piano Lesson.

The dialogue sparks with intelligence, the characters run as deep as the wells that figure in several off-stage drownings, and the plot is a high stakes clash between the natural and the supernatural worlds.
The downside: Wilson peters out with his final scene, leaving many a loose end dangling and filling the stage with the contrived drama of special effects and cacophonous screaming in lieu of a solid, satisfying conclusion. But right up until those final flashy and ultimately disappointing moments, The Piano Lesson is both richly rewarding and absorbing. 

Set in the 1930s, the play is the fourth in Wilson’s monumental 20th Century cycle. Penning a drama for each decade, Wilson explored the African-American experience (as much as that experience can be described as a collective) with more detail, scope and insight than any other American playwright to date. Like each of the plays in the cycle, The Piano Lesson is takes place in Pittsburgh in a world where the past reaches out to touch the present like fingers of encroaching fog. Here, the echoes of bygone times are both tangible (the hand-carved, heirloom piano at the heart of the tale) and intangible (the slithering shadows and whispered rustlings of the dead).

Wrapped through it all is a titanic clash of wills among members of the Charles family, a group whose slave ancestors are barely two generations gone. Boy Willie (Ronald Conner, spot-on as an exasperatingly garrulous man in a hurry to begin his future ) wants to sell the incredibly valuable piano of the title in the name of the future. He’d use the money to buy the land his grandfather worked as a slave and, by starting a farm there, avenge his father’s life-long humiliation at toiling another man’s land for subsistence wages.

Boy Willie’s sister Berniece (Tyla Abercrumbie) is granite solid in her insistence that the piano stay right where it is, in the Pittsburgh house she shares with her Uncle Doaker (Smith, an actor who is a maestro when it comes to depicting August Wilson creations). The family paid for the instrument in blood, Berniece notes with understated yet uncompromising passion – every note that comes from the piano is rooted in the death of Boy Charles, their grandfather.

The harrowing story of how Boy Charles died and the piano was spirited from the Sutter plantation to the Charles home is a masterpiece monologue - and one Smith makes near-mesmerizing.

The passage is a thriller; part wild adventure tale and part spine-chilling ghost story. It is also as horrifically tragic as the dozens of unquiet hobo ghosts who everyone in the Charles family knows haunt the Yellow Dog train line. (How those hobos burned to death in a boxcar along with Boy Charles? That’s a story that will stay with audiences long after the final curtain.)

Like all the dramas in Wilson’s formidable cycle, The Piano Lesson is shadowed by the supernatural. Berniece and Doaker are both visited by Sutter – after he died by falling down his well – dressed in his burial suit and calling for Boy Willie. And in bit of sound design creepiness par excellence (by Nick Keenan), Doaker’s very house shudders and moans every time Boy Willie attempts to move the heavy piano.

Of the many marvelous intricacies winding through the drama, Boy Willie and Berniece’s clash of wills is the most dominant, although there are fully realized and often hilarious side-stories: The pathetic and poignant attempts by Boy Willie’s friend Lymon (Brian Weddington) to get a girlfriend, if only for a night; Doaker’s ne’er do well brother Wining Boy (Alfred H. Wilson) trying raise a few bucks by pawning a silk suit; Boy Willie’s ceaseless chattering.

Being the great dramatist that he is, Wilson makes it all but impossible to decide who is right in the core conflict between Boy Willie and Berniece. Boy Willie’s dreams of a better future, Berniece’s insistence on honoring the past – both perspectives are presented with passion and detail.

The ending offers no resolution, only fire and brimstone and an abruptness that leaves the piece feeling unfinished. A coda, we’ll argue, is in order.

The Piano Lesson continues through June 7 at the Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis. Tickets are $32 - $54 and available by clicking here, going to www.courttheatre.edu or by calling 773/753-4472.