The first time the title instrument appears in the new film The Piano Lesson, it is being shoved out of a house with a rushed, furtive energy that makes it clear that an act of burglary is afoot. Even before the backstory of this particular chordophone pilfering is formally revealed, there’s a immediate sense that its hasty removal from the posh surroundings just might be an act of justice, too.

The Piano Lesson is adapted from the August Wilson play of the same name. In its stage form, The Piano Lesson is the fifth entry in the playwright’s mammoth Pittsburgh Cycle, ten plays set across the different decades of the twentieth century. The film version is the third effort in Denzel Washington’s similarly ambitious mission to produce screen adaptations of all of the Pittsburgh Cycle works. This time, Washington kept it a family affair. One son, Malcolm Washington, is the director, and another, John David Washington, takes the lead role of Doaker, a charming Southern scheme who visits the home of his sister (Danielle Deadwyler) and uncle (Samuel L. Jackson) in nineteen-thirties Pittsburgh. He’s there to scrape together some money for the purchase of the farmland where his father toiled as a sharecropper. Among his intentions is selling off the ornately carved piano that was passed down through the family and now sits largely unused in his sister’s living room.

The film is Malcolm Washington’s feature directorial debut, and it shows he has tremendous promise. He thinks and expresses himself visually in a manner that suggests real artistic ambition. Although largely an attribute, that ambition also manifests in Washington sometimes pressing too hard to wrench The Piano Lesson away from its stage origins and stage scenes in a way that could only happen in film. As often as the approach really works — as in the sharply edited scene where a group of men perform a stomping version of a spiritual around a dining room table — Washington does occasionally succumb to florid fussiness that ultimately distracts from the impressive sturdiness, thematic potency, and emotional depth of Wilson’s story. Sometimes, Washington gets in the way.

Washington’s way with actors, however, is nearly flawless. His sibling occasionally runs a gear or two higher than is strictly needed as Doaker. That broad intensity is built right into the part, so it’s hard to fault him too much. Deadwyler is magnificent, playing the strong-yet-wounded sister, Berniece, with a snapping vibrancy that’s still completely natural. Samuel L. Jackson is equally exceptional in a less showy role, building a spectrum between ease and exasperation that speaks to the demeanor of a man who long ago decided that simply getting along to get along was triumph enough in a difficult world.

Wilson’s plays don’t need the validation of movie adaptations. His accomplishments clearly identify him as one the great U.S. playwrights in the past fifty years. Even so, it’s gratifying to have the work preserved so well in this way. If it’s a little flawed, the film version of The Piano Lesson clearly has tremendous worth.