Latham
- Flesh and Blood review
of "Driving Miss Daisy"
This is
the difference between theater and
film, between television and the stage.
Watch the Academy Award-winning 1989
film "Driving Miss Daisy"
over and over. Go ahead. It will be
the same every time. Your opportunities
for epiphany are limited, to say the
least. That's not to say they aren't
there, just that they're narrowed
down.
Put a few living people onstage and
put Alfred Uhry's words in their mouths,
and now you're making room for wonder.
I've seen "Driving Miss Daisy."
I've seen the film and I've seen the
play. But I never really saw it until
Thursday night at Curtain Call Theatre.
What a work; what a cast.
"Daisy," of course, the
story of an unexpected relationship
between a black chauffeur and a Jewish
widow. In Atlanta, in 1948, 72-year-old
Daisy Werthan backs her Packard into
the garage and her son Boolie says
enough is enough.
He hires a driver named Hoke Coleburn
to spirit her about town, but –
at least at first – Daisy will
have none of it.
After six days of sitting in the kitchen,
Coleburn finally convinces the vinegary
old coot to let him take to her the
Piggly Wiggly.
"Six days," he says on the
phone to Boolie, "same time it
took the Lord to make the world."
That first week multiplies and eventually
"Daisy" moves through the
years to 1973, glimpsing changes in
culture, race and conscience —
and in Daisy and Hoke — along
the way.
Everything about this production is
marvelous. Greg Mitchell's set design
– a sort of runway paved with
photos, postcards and newspaper headlines
– traces the friends' journey
symbolically.
Careful attention is paid by Lori
Barringer's sound design, Jenn Dugan's
costumes and Roberta Rice's properties,
which also press the time forward
in subtle, yet telling ways.
Director Phil Rice has put all of
the action on the floor and, in turn,
put the patrons onstage. It's a remarkably
simple turnabout that brings this
piece alive, putting the actors virtually
in the laps of the audience.
And what actors.
Kevin Gardner, who has been working
his way on to area stages since returning
from a career in California, is perfect
as Boolie – all agitation and
distraction with his much loved but
aggravating "doodle" of
a mother.
Lucy Breyer makes her CCT debut as
Daisy, and it's a welcome entrance.
She ages with dignity rather than
fragility and when she literally lets
her long gray hair down at the end
of the play it is also a letting go
of 90 some odd years of fears and
frustrations. Great work.
And Emmett Ferris is Hoke Colburn.
Ferris only began acting a few years
ago but he is so comfortable and natural
onstage and his interactions with
Daisy – whether bitter or sweet
– are simply the exchanges of
two people, not two actors.
There is truly a beauty in this production
that opened the play to me in new,
exciting ways.
Much of that credit goes to Rice,
for daring to break out and off of
the stage in CCT's intimate space;
and just as much goes to his exemplary
cast.
Alfred
Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 play,
"Driving Miss Daisy," currently
offered by Latham's Curtain Call Theater,
has all the formulaic plot points of
a made-for-television movie. An unenlightened
racist suddenly in need of assistance
by the object of her passive derision
discovers that the differences between
them are few to none and finds a new
best friend on her numerous journeys
to the Piggly-Wiggly. It's a plot contrived
to manipulate the emotions of the audience
and to slam them with the notions of
right and wrong.
But why this play works is that it doesn't
preach and neither do its characters.
They simply live and while they live,
like us, they change. Change comes over
time in small moments. Sometimes they
are unnoticed, and sometimes they drop
like a bombshell. And while at times
this play seems cute and dated, its
core theme remains honest and true.
Feisty Miss Daisy Werthan, a well-to-do
Jewish widow in ! 1948 Atlanta, can
no longer safely drive a car. Long-suffering
but attentive son, Boolie, hires a black
driver, Hoke, to drive his mother's
new vehicle. Miss Daisy sees the arrangement
as an affront to her capability and
a waste of money, and she refuses to
be driven. But Hoke is a wise and patient
man, and she finally gives in.
As they drive together through more
than 20 years, a friendship forms between
them, in spite of her unconscious racism.
The journey deepens, and their bond
fully forges, when Daisy becomes a victim
of the hate directed at her own people.
Director Phil Rice has the good fortune
to have three actors that agree not
to emotionalize the story and just take
the journey. He does good work with
good material.
As Boolie, Miss Daisy's dull but successful
businessman son, Kevin Gardner captures
well the man caught in the crossfire
between mother, wife and changing mores.
Often tossed off as a plot device, Boolie's
transition is frequently overlooked,
but not here as Gardner's portrayal
is multi-layered, dynamic and very funny,
revealing Boolie to be the fulcrum of
the play from which the other two characters
balance.
Lucy Breyer as the parsimonious Miss
Daisy may be missing some of the self-defining
spirit and subtlety that the playwright
wrote, but the actress manages to entertain
and brings us close to essence of the
schoolteacher who still has things to
learn. Breyer's accent fades as the
evening moves on and Miss Daisy's truculence
is lacking at times, but the actress'
intent and understanding of the woman
is clear -- just not fully realized.
But the evening truly belongs to Emmett
Ferris. Ferris brings forward Hoke's
bottomless store of good sense and immense
dignity. Slowly evolving from an employee
agreeing to Miss Daisy's nonsense, to
quietly challenging her values as an
equal human being, Ferris finds all
the humor in the character and makes
bold choices appear fluid and simple.
It's a winning and remarkable performance.
Staged very simply with the audience
surrounding the action, Rice's direction
of the piece is clear, simple and direct,
perfectly unencumbered. But while act
one moves briskly, act two slows and
moves dangerously close to the edge
of letting the emotions drive instead
of the plot, but the last scene redeems
and says exactly what the story speaks.
