Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks and John David Washington will star in a new Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning The Piano Lesson at the St. James Theatre, with performances beginning September 19 for a 16-week limited run. Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson, wife to Samuel J., will direct the production, becoming the first woman to direct a Wilson play on the Main Stem in her Broadway directorial debut.
According to PlayBill, Jackson will star as Doaker Charles, with Washington as Boy Willie and Brooks as Berniece.
The playis the fourth in Wilson’s Century Cycle, which explores the Black experience in every decade of the 20th century with such works as Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Jitney, among others. The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1936, with a brother and sister embroiled in a battle over a family heirloom piano carved with the faces of their ancestors. The work had its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987 starring Jackson, and made its Broadway debut via a Goodman Theatre production in 1990, starring Carl Gordon, Charles S. Dutton, and S. Epatha Merkerson. The work would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and New York Drama Critics’ Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Best Play, along with a Peabody. The upcoming production will be its first Broadway revival.
