The Dead Piano

The Blakes are a prosperous black bourgeois family comfortably ensconced in St. Albans, Queens. Finley is a successful doctor; Olga, his wife, can almost pass for white and is anything but comfortable about her race; and their spoiled daughter, Sophie, has just been accepted at Bennington. Their complacent lives are shattered one September night when they are taken hostage in their own home by two black militants, members of a group called The Committee. Over the course of twelve harrowing hours both sides will strip themselves to the emotional bone in this psychologically charged 1969 melodrama, which crosses Edward Albee with Amiri Baraka with The Desperate Hours to devastating effect.