Al Sharpton gives birthday surprise to Samuel L. Jackson

• On his 74th birthday, Samuel L. Jackson celebrated on Broadway.
• Rev. Al Sharpton surprised him with a cake.
• Reps claim that the Piano Lesson is the season’s highest-grossing revival play.

Al Sharpton is one of a select group of famous visitors who came to Ethel Barrymore to see Samuel and the cast perform. Brandee Evans, Condola Rashad, Deborah Joy Winans, Taraji P. Henson, Giancarlo Esposito, and Natasha Lyonne were recently welcomed to The Piano Lesson.

On his 74th birthday, Samuel L. Jackson celebrated on Broadway. At the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the Pulp Fiction Oscar nominee is starring in the Main Stem revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. During the curtain call of the performance, Rev. Al Sharpton surprised him with a cake.

The limited Broadway run, directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Samuel’s wife, will last through January 29.

LaTanya, 73, talked about what it was like getting to work so closely with her husband before the show’s official opening night on October 13.

“Let me just say: Do know that when I leave the theater — as late as it is after they leave — I go home and cook, and then I do the dishes, just so we’re all on that page,” she told the news in September.

“Then, over dinner, of course, we discuss what has transpired during the day because I find that sometimes it’s easier to offer suggestions at that time — of what could be, you know, lifted. And maybe we want to look at this a different way,” she added. “That’s an easier time to do it because that’s the time that we usually spend together.”

The play had its Yale Repertory Theatre debut in 1987, and in 1990 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It chronicles the conflict between the Charles family members over the fate of a piano that was a family relic covered with artwork created by an ancestor who had been held as a slave.

Reps for the show claim that The Piano Lesson is the season’s highest-grossing revival play. Along with Samuel, it also features The Color Purple actress Danielle Brooks, actor and former football player John David Washington, who is also Denzel Washington’s son.

Samuel is making his first appearance on a Broadway stage in over ten years.

In particular, The Piano Lesson marks a full-circle moment for the actor, who created the character of Boy Willie (now played by Washington) when the piece made its debut at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987. When the show transferred to Broadway, he performed as an understudy. According to LaTanya, directing Wilson’s play has been a “life dream.”

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