Boy Willie is the kind of man who is always hedging his bets. So when he turns up in the middle of the night at his sister Berniece’s house with a money-making scheme, she is unmoved in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s well-executed production of “The Piano Lesson.”
Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning late playwright August Wilson, “The Piano Lesson” is the fourth play in his American Century Cycle, which explores African American life through 10 rich narratives all set in his native Pittsburgh spanning every decade of the 20th century. (This one is set in 1936.) It’s a prescient time to stage this work as another cycle centering Black stories — Mfoniso Udofia’s Ufot Family Cycle — spills onto stages in Greater Boston over the next two years. Partially inspired by Wilson’s work, Udofia’s nine plays are a critical continuation of developing and adding Black narratives to the canon.
At the start of the show, Boy Willie, a fantastic Omar Robinson (“Much Ado About Nothing,” “Toni Stone”), bursts through the door burning with urgency and energy. He is angling to buy a plot of land — owned by the Sutters who once owned his family. To succeed though, he needs to sell a truck full of watermelons with the help of his affable friend Lymon (an enjoyable Anthony T. Goss, ASP’s “Seven Guitars”) and sell a family heirloom to get the money. The heirloom in question is a piano featuring the carved faces of relatives, made by an ancestor.