It’s 20 years since most of us have seen the movie, Driving Miss Daisy, with Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. The Alfred Uhry drama that Oscar-winning motion picture was based upon is currently playing in the Black Box performance space at Village Players Theatre. It’s an absorbing production, smoothly directed by Carl Occhipinti, showcasing subtle performances that make the relationship between an old Jewish lady and her African-American chauffeur feel honest and real. There is great chemistry between the two leads.
I hesitate to call this show heartwarming because to many folks that adjective means corny. But it’s a beautiful piece, deceptively simple yet dramatically affecting, and it’s far funnier than I remembered. It’s my favorite kind of show-it can make you laugh and make you cry. The sold-out opening night house gave the performers a standing ovation.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning semi-autobiographical play was inspired by the playwright’s own southern Jewish family background. Uhry says he based his protagonists on his own grandmother and her long-time chauffeur.
After she “totals” her car and blames it on the vehicle, Miss Daisy’s son, Boolie, insists the spunky 72-year-old widow will have to get a chauffeur to drive her to Temple and the Piggly Wiggly. Over her objections, Boolie hires a gentle, 60-something driver.
The remarkable Betty Scott Smith, 86 years old, plays the title role, and Smith totally inhabits the bull-headed, bossy old lady while managing to make her likable, too. During the time frame depicted, she ages from an alert woman in her early 70s to an infirm old lady drifting in and out of confusion and delusion.
Miss Daisy’s a difficult woman. Her life isn’t overflowing with intimate friends. So it’s really rather fun watching these two strong-willed people butting heads. Her chauffeur Hoke (Renardo Johnson) is her primary companion. But even though the relationship between employer and employee begins with frostiness, over the years the pair comes to understand one another and forge a rather close friendship. Though their backgrounds are quite different, she and Hoke are both stubborn, proud people.
The play begins in the era of streetcars and segregation just after World War II and continues moving forward into what seems to be the mid-1970s-a span of some 25 years. Miss Daisy is in her upper 90s by the end.
Driving Miss Daisy is structured rather like sketch comedy with brief scenes separated by blackouts. Between each vignette a vintage song from the Hit Parade by singers like Doris Day, Perry Como, or Eartha Kitt, provides appropriate period mood and a sense of rapidly passing time.
I think audiences are starved to be “taken somewhere” and this play achieves exactly that. It takes us back to a specific time and a place while providing us with credible characters to care about.
I have seen the talented Renardo Johnson on local stages a lot this past year, but this is an especially strong performance. In lesser hands, this role might resemble a cardboard cut-out. Honest, hard-working Hoke is even-keeled, with infinite grace and patience. He never turns his back on Miss Daisy despite all the grief she gives him. This is true friendship-to stick with someone, accepting the flaws.
In one moving scene, Miss Daisy, an ex-school teacher, realizes Hoke cannot read and encourages him to learn. And there’s an especially chilling bit later on when Hoke arrives at Miss Daisy’s home to find her in an agitated, disoriented state.
Jack Crowe is quite good as put-upon Boolie, trapped between his aging mother’s demands and the burden of his own business and marriage. Boolie has both backbone and good humor. Crowe brings out the character’s frustrations without hammering them too hard.
I know African-Americans my age who grown up in the South during the era portrayed in this drama and who hate this material. They see the faithful, long-suffering Hoke as little more than a lamentable, illiterate Uncle Tom while his fussy old lady boss is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
These critics have a point to some extent, but they overlook how these two tough old birds subtly develop mutual dependency, even love. Their years together soften Miss Daisy and give Hoke more confidence. They enrich one another during a very volatile but pivotal period of history.
The play is performed in Village Players’ smaller Black Box space with somewhat modest production values. But the strengths of the acting, direction, and writing carry it through beautifully.
Tim Grover is stage manager. Karen Gerbig appears briefly as a nurse’s aide.
This play doesn’t have anything really profound to say, but I often find it exhilarating to revisit works of art at different points in life. Twenty years ago, in my 40s, I thought this was a show that dealt chiefly with friendship transcending race. This time around, I see clearly that it also concentrates on the dynamics of aging and the inevitable confrontation with the loss of independence.
Who’s changed – me or the play?
Doug Deuchler is a retired teacher/school librarian who, when he isn’t reviewing local theater for Wednesday Journal, is a stand-up comic, tour guide/docent and author of several books about Oak Park and surrounding communities.
