Maybe we should change the theory that most playwrights secretly just want to write a ghost story, and accept that
all of them do. America's great chronicler of the 20th century August Wilson did so in the 1930s instalment of his play cycle, and while by all accounts Malcolm Washington's film version has edged more into horror movie tropes than the original suggests, Wilson's
The Piano Lesson does centre on a literal ghost as a way of dragging up a whole lot of metaphorical ones. The literal ghost is that of Sutter, last descendant of a slave-owning family, who's recently died in vaguely suspicious circumstances. Boy Willie (John David Washington) brings news of his death to his sister Berniece (
Danielle Deadwyler) in Pittsburgh. Their own ancestors were slaves owned by Sutter's family, and while it's been decades since their emancipation a grim connection to their former owners has continued through the generations.
