Friday March 29, 2024
DRIVING MISS DAISY
Review

DRIVING MISS DAISY

March 8 2013

DRIVING MISS DAISY, Theatre Royal Sydney, 2-31 March 2013, then touring nationally. Photos by Jeff Busby: Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones; right: Boyd Gaines.

Driving Miss Daisy began life off-Broadway in the northern spring of 1987. By the time it closed in 1990 it had been awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for drama, played more than 1000 performances and had been successfully produced in the West End

Some two decades on, an all-star revival, with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, took the play to Broadway proper for the first time. It was wildly successful and later transferred to the West End. The same production model - mega-stars who are also accomplished stage actors - is in play for the Australian tour, with Earle Jones driving the legendary Angela Lansbury around the country.

Better known in Australia as the 1989 Golden Globe and Oscar-winning movie directed by Bruce Beresford, this is the original stage play by Alfred Uhry from which he adapted the film script. And what an eye-opener the play is with just three characters and a simple but effective staging.

Driving Miss Daisy begins in 1948 when the elderly, wealthy and cantankerous Jewish widow Daisy Werthan is actually driving her son Boolie up the wall. The independent old buzzard has inadvertently crashed her car one time too many, after mistaking forward for reverse, and Boolie insists that in addition to her maid, she must have a chauffeur.

As the long-suffering Boolie, Boyd Gaines may not be a marquee name in Australia but as a four-time Tony winner he is a master craftsman and the trio is finely matched and a joy to watch.

Boolie interviews Hoke (James Earl Jones) for the job in a scene that is startling in its presentation of how things were in the South - the play is set in Atlanta - in the years after World War Two. Boolie is respectful towards the older man, but Hoke is "coloured" and he knows his place and is twice as respectful of the young man - "Yassuh," "No suh," in his turn.

DRIVING MISS DAISY

Daisy Werthan's response to Hoke is both excruciating and hilarious. She has no trouble telling him exactly where he can stick his chauffeur's dutiful intentions and is as obnoxious to him as non-Jewish Atlanta society would be to her. It's something Hoke is aware of and gently points out, his tongue in his cheek and a gentle manner not quite disguising his deeper awareness.

What happens over the following 25 years - from her initial refusal to get in the car to the deep friendship and regard that grows between them - also touches lightly but clearly on the political and social changes. These are mirrored and observed - in passing - by the two ornery old coots but never rubbed in. Consequently, while the play is superficially simply tenderly amusing and, finally, tenderly touching, it actually turns out to be much more than that.

The performances, by the two principals and Boyd Gaines, are a collective master class in stage craft and the redeeming power of experience and hard graft over mere stardom. The production is deftly handled by the brilliant veteran director David Esbjornson. (Next time STC is looking to import a foreign luminary it would be great to ask him rather than some of the ham-handed "names" who've hijacked the title.) 

As it is, Driving Miss Daisy is in the best possible hands, onstage and off, and is a delightful and emotionally meaningful 90 minutes of deliciously well-put-together entertainment. Take tissues and your best laughs.

 

 

Subscribe

Get all the content of the week delivered straight to your inbox!

Register to Comment
Reset your Password
Registration Login
Registration