Play-to-film adaptations can often flourish thanks to the little tricks and turns that only the silver screen can provide: whether it’s Jack Nicholson’s claustrophobic close-up as he exclaims guilt in A Few Good Men, or the frantic editing of Amadeus. On the other hand, some adaptations do too little and end up feeling literally ‘stagey’ as a result. With The Piano Lesson in particular, it feels like not much has been gained by re-rendering this Pulitzer- winner on celluloid.

Adapted from August Wilson’s play — part of the ‘Pittsburgh Cycle’ that includes Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (all three now Denzel Washington-produced films) — The Piano Lesson is set in 1936 in Pittsburgh, where the Charles family live, with a large piano sitting unused in their house. Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) explains the musical instrument’s tragic backstory: enslaved ancestors were traded so that the white head...