August Wilson's 'Piano Lesson' at the McCarter: A long, rich train of thrills

'Sutter fell in the well," a character says early in August Wilson's

The Piano Lesson

. Wilson, who died soon after completing his Century Cycle (10 plays about African American life in each decade of the 20th century), wrote that line, and then wondered, "Who's Sutter?" Such are the mysterious workings of the creative process.

Sutter, it turns out, is a ghost who haunts a family.

It is 1936. The place, as it almost always is in Wilson's plays, is his own neighborhood, Pittsburgh's Hill District. The McCarter Theatre Center set - a superb design by Neil Patel, with a whole urban world piled up behind the house in which the action takes place - is complete with meticulous touches like lights on in distant curtained windows. Closer, there is a knitting bag and a box of dominoes next to the sofa. In Wilson's world, realism and ghosts inhabit the same space.

The piano of the title is a family heirloom, a legacy from slavery days when the history of the Charles family was carved into its wood by an ancestor, a slave held by the Sutters. Berniece (Miriam A. Hyman, in a beautifully shaded performance of emotional highs and lows) is a widow who lives with her uncle (John Earl Jelks) and her daughter (Frances Brown). Avery (Owiso Odera) is a preacher, trying to persuade Berniece to marry him and to "put the past behind you."

Her brother bursts in in the middle of the night. Boy Willie (Stephen Tyrone Williams in an electrifying performance, even more impressive since he joined the cast only two weeks ago) is up from the Deep South with a truckload of watermelons (a nicely satirical iconic image). A scoffer and schemer who struts like a rooster, he is also an impassioned man of the land. He plans to sell the piano and go back home to buy a farm. Berniece refuses to sell it: "Money can't buy what that piano cost."

Boy Willie's friend Lymon (David Pegram), a hick womanizer, wants to stay in the city. And then another old friend drops in, Wining Boy (Cleavant Derricks), another freeloader, another drunk, another charmer. And, as always in a Wilson play, there is singing and dancing, because he understood that even serious, intense dramas should be entertaining, and these men provide spine-tingling, thrilling music in spontaneous, impassioned song.

This is an actors' play. Everybody gets a fervent monologue, everybody gets to laugh and cry, everybody gets to show his or her stuff. And their stuff is very fine, especially under the subtle direction of Jade King Carroll, who lets this long, rich play take its long, rich time.

The Piano Lesson

Through Feb. 7 at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton.

Tickets: $25-94.50.

Information: 609-258-2787

or www.mccarter.org EndText