Ghostly Piano

August Wilson’s play, The Piano Lesson, now running through November 13 at The Hartford Stage, might makes its thematic statement in this way, “The Piano Lesson is: Don’t sell your birthright.” The dueling siblings are not Jacob and Esau, but the inheritance at stake in the play is ancestral lineage, one that has been literally carved into the piano’s wooden exterior by a grandfather. It is so sacred as to cause the playwright to summon supernatural forces to resolve the conflict.

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