Ray Fisher Joins Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington in Cast of Broadway’s ‘The Piano Lesson’

Ray Fisher will be taking to a Broadway stage this fall for the limited run of The Piano Lesson

Producers for the show announced that the Justice League star, along with three other actors, has been cast in the upcoming play written by August Wilson, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, the show stars Danielle Brooks, John David Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.

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Fisher will play Lymon, a friend of Washington’s Boy Willie and a man of few words. He’s come to Pittsburgh to partner with his friend on new ventures and is determined to make a life in the city after being shot and jailed for his involvement in a theft led by Boy Willie. Beyond his role as Victor Stone, also known as Cyborg, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and a part in the upcoming Snyder movie Rebel Moon, Fisher has had a number of TV roles including parts in Women of the Movement, True Detective and The Astronaut Wives Club. His stage credits include Fetch Clay, Make Man off-Broadway.

Trai Byers, April Matthis and Michael Potts were also announced as the newest members of the Broadway production, which will begin performances at the St. James Theater on Sept. 19 and run for 16 weeks.

Obie-winner Matthis will play Grace, a woman who Boy Willie takes a romantic interest in and brings back to his sister Berniece’s (Brooks) house, and who later finds herself connecting with Lymon. She’s appeared off-Broadway in Help, Toni Stone, Measure for Measure and more, with TV and film credits on The Blacklist, New Amsterdam and The Good Fight.

Byers will make his Broadway debut in The Piano Lesson as Avery, a downtown elevator operator-turned preacher who is romantically linked to Berniece. The actor has appeared in Ava DuVernay’s Selma and in TV series Empire and 90210.

The role of Wining Boy, a comedic figure and former recording star who wanders in and out of the home of Boy Willie and Berniece’s uncle, Doaker (Jackson), is being played by Potts. The actor has previously appeared in several August Wilson productions for the stage and screen, including Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the 2017 Broadway run of Jitney, and in a number of other shows including The Prom, 1984, The Book of Mormon, and opposite Denzel Washington in The Iceman Cometh.

Arriving more than 30 years after its Broadway debut at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1990, the production marks Richardson as the first woman to direct a Wilson play on Broadway. The fourth play in Wilson’s celebrated and groundbreaking American Century Cycle, The Piano Lesson follows a brother and sister pitted against one another in Pittsburgh’s Hill District during 1936 over the fate of a family heirloom — a piano carved with the faces of their ancestors.

Brian Anthony Moreland (Thoughts of a Colored Man), Sonia Friedman (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and Tom Kirdahy (Hadestown) are producing.

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