Driving Miss Daisy is a warm hearted,
humorous and affecting study of the unlikely relationship between an
aging, crotchety white Southern lady, and a proud, soft-spoken black
man. A long-run Off-Broadway success and an Academy Award-winning film. It is the Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and the
Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. I went to a dress rehearsal at the Theater at St. Luke’s (4851 S. Apopka-Vineland Road, Orlando, Florida 32819.)
The
place is the Deep South, the time 1948, just prior to the civil rights
movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, (Elizabeth Murff) a rich,
sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son,
Boolie, (Chad Lewis) that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur.
The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed black man,
Hoke, (Michael Mormon) whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn,
is not impressed with his employer’s patronizing tone and, he believes,
her latent prejudice.
But, in a series of absorbing scenes spanning
twenty-five years, the two, despite their mutual differences, grow ever
closer to, and more dependent on, each
other. Slowly and
steadily the dignified, good-natured Hoke breaks down the stern defenses
of the ornery old lady, as she teaches him to read and write and, in a
gesture of good will and shared concern, invites him to join her at a
banquet in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the play ends Hoke has a
final visit with Miss Daisy, now ninety-seven and confined to a nursing
home, and while it is evident that a vestige of her fierce independence
and sense of position still remain, it is also movingly clear that they
have both come to realize they have more in common than they ever
believed possible—and that times and circumstances would ever allow them
to publicly admit. The chemistry between the veteran actors, was natural and charismatic. I had seen these actors play the same parts back in 2010 and they have grown into the roles over the years.
Tickets ($15) are available.
Performances are at 7PM at Saint Luke’s Building C Founder’s Hall.
Remaining show dates:
2:30 PM Saturday January 20, 2018
7 PM Saturday January 20, 2018
2:30 PM Sunday January 21, 2018