The answer is probably just what you would guess: Though Ramsey's version has its strengths, he can't touch Dallas, who has a long history with Wilson, including directing the playwright's world premiere production of Seven Guitars back in 1995.

Where Dallas' interpretations of the characters are nuanced and fully formed, Ramsey's are uneven. Some, such as Malik Yoba's Boy Willie, puffed up with confidence and swaggering his way from South to North and back again, hit the sweet spot. Yoba's Willie picks and picks at everyone's emotional scabs with his unrelenting chatter until the whole room is sore.

But where Dallas gave Willie's sidekick Lymon a depth and alluring softness, at the Delaware Theatre, in Edward O'Blenis' portrayal of the character as a wide-eyed rube, Ramsey goes strictly for laughs. However, Tracey Conyer Lee's Berniece has enough iron in her blood to stand up to Willie and depict the siblings as opposing forces of equal strength, a place where Dallas' admittedly casting-challenged production (his original Berniece was replaced a week before opening night) fell short.

In a story about generational ties - should the family sell a piano carved by enslaved ancestors to buy the land they once worked? - its elders must be particularly complex, and while Roger Robinson's Doaker could be the prototype for still waters running deep, Cedric Turner makes a mess of a role that just might be the play's most rewarding. Turner's Wining Boy weighs down the script's pace instead of enlivening it, and he had enough line flubs on opening night to deflate tension in several crucial scenes (though he wasn't the only one flubbing, and unfortunately, the play's second act was littered with dropped dialogue).

Still, Ramsey delivers an adequate Piano Lesson, and a muscular version of August Wilson, though his direction is perhaps better served with a more nuanced touch. Ina Mayhew's set illustrates this idea with a line of tilted, cartoonish rooftops peering up from behind the family's cozy living room and kitchen. If everything outside is caricature and artifice, what happens inside the home had better bring all three dimensions of everyone in the room - and with the appearance of a ghost here, a fourth - into high relief.

The Piano Lesson

Through April 27 at Delaware Theatre Company,

200 Water St., Wilmington.

Tickets: $31-$49.

Information: 302-594-1100 or www.DelawareTheatre.org.