Jim Kershner : ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ deserves your time
At the risk of sounding like a crusader, I want everyone to see “Driving Miss Daisy” at Interplayers.
Even if you don’t attend much live theater – especially if you don’t attend much live theater – this is one show to see. It’s hard to imagine anyone attending this simple, quiet, exceptionally well-written play and not being impressed with how entertaining and moving live theater can be.
Many of us remember the 1989 movie version, which won Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Screenplay Oscars. Believe it or not, the stage version is better, simpler, shorter and even more focused. It did, after all, win playwright Alfred Uhry the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
I don’t want to oversell it – this Interplayers version is not perfect. Sometimes the actors are a little hesitant. The set was clearly constructed on a shoestring. Even the program has a whiff of amateurism about it.
Yet none of this detracts even slightly from our enjoyment. Director Maynard Villers has a perfect cast in Alice Kennedy, Clarence Forech and Tony Caprile. He directs them with restraint and subtlety – we never see them as Actors with a Capital A. We see them simply as Daisy, the elderly Jewish Atlanta widow; Hoke, the dignified black chauffeur; and Boolie, the well-meaning son.
Kennedy and Forech have the immense advantage of not having to pretend to be someone they’re not. Kennedy must indeed be approaching Daisy’s age, at least Daisy’s age at the beginning of the play, which is in her 70s. Kennedy’s voice and movements are not affectations.
Daisy is a querulous old lady, and she reminded me of an irritable hen as she walked stiffly around the stage, holding her arms up at her sides, clucking and fussing at both Hoke and Boolie.
She’s a tough old bird to like, quick to take offense and quick to assume the worst when, for instance, she discovers a 33-cent can of salmon missing from her larder. “They” just want to steal her things, she says.
Yet Kennedy clearly shows us that Daisy’s irascibility stems from Daisy’s utter frustration at losing her independence, which happens in the first scene, when Boolie forbids her from driving and hires (against her will) a chauffeur: Hoke.
Forech does not have to guess about life in the South during this era. He was a child in Arkansas in the 1940s, so Hoke’s accent and mannerisms come to him easily. Even more vital, Forech understands the correct mixture of deference and exasperation for Hoke to express. Sometimes, when Daisy accuses him of being stupid, he merely gives the slightest lift to the eyebrows and carries on. He needs the job, after all. Other times – when Daisy refuses to let him stop for a bathroom break – he reminds her, quietly yet with force, that he is not a child, not an animal, but a man. She tests his dignity often – yet Hoke never allows her to violate it.
The character of Boolie is more important in the stage play than in the movie, and Caprile plays him as a sympathetic and sweet son – even though Daisy never gives him any credit.
Race in the South is the play’s larger theme, explored with uncommon subtlety by Uhry. Daisy can accuse “them” of coveting her canned salmon, yet when she says she is “not a prejudiced person,” we believe her. The situation is complicated – and besides, Daisy is meaner to Boolie than to Hoke.
Yet the underlying theme is friendship, the unlikely one between Daisy and Hoke. My lasting memory of this production will be Villers’ beautifully staged final scene, in a nursing home. Daisy slowly shuffles downstage in a walker. The last image is of Hoke, fork in hand, feeding Miss Daisy her Thanksgiving pie.
“Driving Miss Daisy” continues through Feb. 3. Call (509) 455-7529 for tickets.