‘The Piano Lesson’ Broadway review: A blisteringly acted drama

UPDATE: Last season’s Tony-winning Broadway production of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out proved so popular that producers made the unusual decision to bring the show back, its cast largely in tact, for some extra innings. Take Me Out begins a 14-week Broadway run today, playing through January 29, 2023. The original cast remains except for one: Bill Heck will replace Patrick J. Adams in the role of Kippy Sunderstrom.

Twenty years after it first arrived to shake up a complacent Broadway and make a Pulitzer Prize winner of its author Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog has lost none of its vitality and power and cunning. Director Kenny Leon proves that in a vibrant new production opening tonight at the Golden Theatre.

Covid isn’t done with New York’s theater scene just yet. At least four Broadway and major Off Broadway productions have either canceled or postponed performances or temporarily replaced principal cast members in the last week due to the virus.

Broadway box office held steady at $28,621,480 last week as a slate of new productions began or continued previews (Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo filled more than 90% of their seats), MJ and Leopoldstadt set house records and The Phantom of the Opera was once again standing room only as the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical heads toward its Feb. 18 closing.

Danielle Brooks celebrated the opening night of her Broadway show The Piano Lesson just days ago and she sadly has to take a break from performing as she just tested positive for COVID-19.

Michael Appler When Tony and Emmy-nominee Danielle Brooks was 17 years old, at home in Greenville, S.C., she picked up a copy of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle,” a canon of 10 plays spanning the 20th century which chronicled African American life in its most vivid, lyrical and intimate settings yet written for the stage. Sifting through the collection, she picked out “The Piano Lesson” and read it, thumbing across the names of African American actors and actresses whom she didn’t yet know. “Today is about preservation,” she told Variety on Thursday at the opening night of the first Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson,” in which Brooks stars as Berniece alongside Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington.

Apple TV just doesn’t seem to care as much as the others about the bottom line. They’re willing to drop a small fortune on shows that simply aren’t designed to break out in a way that would attract a mass audience.

There’s abundant magic still in The Piano Lesson, August Wilson’s grand, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning tale of a Black family torn between legacy and ambition, the past and the future, and, it’s not an overstatement to note, between life and death.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Samuel L. Jackson had his marching orders. So when actor John David Washington approached him for tips about playing Boy Willie, a role Jackson originated in the 1987 production of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” he clammed up. “I was specifically told by the director not to give him advice,” Jackson says. “John David asked several times, but when he realized that I was not allowed to help him, he stopped asking.” The director, in this case, is LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who also happens to be Jackson’s wife, as well as the first woman to oversee a production of Wilson’s work on Broadway. The two are teaming up on the hotly anticipated revival of the classic drama, only this time Sam is playing Boy Willie’s uncle, Doaker Charles. It marks his first time on Broadway since 2011’s “The Mountaintop,” in which he played Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and LaTanya’s  first time directing after a run of acclaimed stage performances, including the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” and 2018’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

William Earl “Death of a Salesman” actor Wendell Pierce, “The Piano Lesson” director LaTanya Richardson Jackson and “Till” star John Douglas Thompson are among the honorees set for the inaugural Salute to Broadway presented by the African American Film Critics Association. The event is set for Oct. 17 at The Lambs Club in the heart of Midtown’s theater district. “It’s no secret that some of our greatest actors have come from the stage or have tested their chops on it,” said Gil Robertson, co-founder of AAFCA. “Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis are just a handful of our beloved icons for which this was true, with Tony winners Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Audra McDonald, Adrienne Warren and Myles Frost among those continuing that legacy. As a reliable pipeline for outstanding Black talent in front of the camera as well as behind it, Hollywood has benefited greatly from this esteemed training ground and AAFCA Salutes Broadway celebrates that rich heritage.”

Caroline, Or Change.” Whereas Caroline was stalwartly cold, Clarke’s Linda is an amiable “Stand By Your Man” type. She never recoils when Willy shouts at her, and in her dewy eyes he can do no wrong. At times, her constant devotion bowls you over; at others, it is one-note.And Khris Davis is Biff, the favorite son who moved out West against Willy’s wishes and can’t live up to his father’s lofty dreams.

Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s classic tragedy of the American Dream gone sour, is revitalized and given room to encompass the Black experience in director Miranda Cromwell’s intriguing production opening at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway tonight. Boasting flat-out terrific performances – Wendell Pierce as Willie Loman and the amazing Sharon D Clarke as his wife Linda – this Death of a Salesman doesn’t so much reinvent Miller’s masterpiece as open its doors to perspectives that enrich the material.

Jordan Moreau “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is slowly getting ready to take a bite out of the weekend box office. It earned $575,000 from 3,453 theaters in Thursday previews, while David O. Russell’s “Amsterdam” picked up $550,000 million from 3,005 theaters. Sony’s live-action/CGI hybrid, co-financed by TSG, is a family-friendly movie about a singing crocodile, starring Grammy-nominated artist Shawn Mendes as the titular reptile. The studio projects an opening haul of $11 million to $12 million, with some projections belting out upwards of $15 million. With a budget of $50 million, it will need plenty of support from kids and families over the fall to snap up a profit. The cast includes Javier Bardem as Hector P. Valenti, Lyle’s flamboyant owner, Brett Gelman as Mr. Grumps and Constance Wu, Scoot McNairy and Winslow Fegley as the Primm family. The Primms move to a new house in New York City, where they discover Lyle, a saltwater crocodile with the voice of a high-end recording artist, living in their attic.

Near the start of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of the musical 1776, a cast made entirely of actors who identify as female, transgender and nonbinary, with multiple representations of race and ethnicity, step into the gold-buckled shoes, literally, of the men who would come to be called the founding fathers. We can only imagine how things might turn out differently, both for the musical and in some alternate real-life universe.

new revival of the show that opened Thursday night on Broadway, absolutely ironclad — and able to stand up to pointless, auteurist, burdensome, woke concepts like the one on display at the American Airlines Theatre.Two hours and 40 minutes with one intermission. At the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W.

“Amsterdam,” David O. Russell‘s first movie in seven years, hits theaters on Friday, and it’s his third team-up with Christian Bale.

Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy . . .

Broadway held fairly steady at the box office last week, with recent arrivals Leopoldstadt and The Piano Lesson leading the pack of fall newcomers with grosses of $758,988 and $704,051, respectively.