MY SAY This is a story told largely inside the Charles home, engaging with the ghosts of the past and the pain of repressed memories as exemplified by the piano. It is heavy with metaphor and symbolism, exploring the ways in which the objects passed down through generations carry with them the burdens of history.

This film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play falters in some specifics, but is still vital viewing.

That’s the underlying conceit of August Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson, in which a piano passed down through generations of one Black family wields the power to unite that family, though it also threatens to drive them apart.

After 'Fences' and 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,' Denzel Washington's commitment to bring August Wilson's work to the screen continues.

What happens at the end of ‘The Piano Lesson’? John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler explain the the final scene, the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog and more.

But with “The Piano Lesson,” Wilson’s work has become a family affair. In 2015, Washington announced that he had made an arrangement with Wilson’s estate to adapt all ten of the plays included in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle – also known as the Century Cycle.