BWW Reviews: DRIVING MISS DAISY Is a Powerful Season Opener

When Alfred Uhry wrote DRIVING MISS DAISY, the first part of his "Atlanta Trilogy" (also including LAST NIGHT AT BALLYHOO and PARADE) he wasn't expecting a Pulitzer. He was seeking to describe Jewish life in Atlanta in the early part of the Twentieth Century. He little expected that his 1987, originally Off-Broadway story of a prickly Jewish dowager and her unwanted chauffeur would completely captivate audiences not Jewish, not African-American, and not Southern, and would lead not only to a popular movie but to international productions of his show, based in the life of his own grandmother.

The history of race relations in America requires a separate chapter or more on the complexities of the relationships between African-Americans and Jews, before, during, and after the heyday of the civil rights movement, though Uhry has touched on parts of the early history in his works, particularly this one. DRIVING MISS DAISY is a tale of a woman whose family itself feels only tenuously welcome in the South, because of Anti-Semitism, but who to her African-American employee seems far more welcome in their world than he is. Her Judaism is weak enough that she's unable to relate at first to his struggles, and she seems more a product of the South than of the Chosen People until her synagogue is bombed. (The bombing, in 1958, is a major piece of Atlanta history, rooted in the local Jewish community's support for Martin Luther King.)

At Open Stage of Harrisburg, director Donald Alsedek puts a veteran cast on stage to tell the story of Daisy "Miss Daisy" Werthan and Hoke Colburn, her driver of many years. When Daisy (Anne Alsedek), at 72, is forced to stop driving herself, her son Boolie (Dan Burke) hires a driver for her (Aaron Bomar as Hoke Colburn) against her wishes. Miss Daisy wants to remain independent, and a driver deprives her of her illusion that she is able to continue taking care of all her affairs. The situations that arise from that are the stuff of the tale.

Dan Burke is certainly more than capable of playing Boolie, which is an important but slightly minor part; it's unfortunate for him that not only the characters of Daisy and Hoke, but their being inhabited by Alsedek and Bomar respectively, render him almost unnoticed. Alsedek and Bomar have a chemistry in these parts that is, ultimately, all that the audience wants to see on the stage; the moments when one or the other is offstage feel incomplete, as delightful as their combined dynamic is to watch.

Not only amusing, but wonderful to watch, is the Christmas scene in which Hoke drives Daisy to her son's Christmas dinner, as she cheerily objects to everything her daughter-in-law has planned; what business do Jews have celebrating Christmas? At the same time, she's all but ready to belt out a carol, or so it feels. It's equally wonderful to watch Alsedek and Bomar in action when the great thaw between them starts - when Daisy, a former teacher, discovers that Hoke, though he's been her driver for some time, is actually unable to read.

On the other hand, and the tension is a product not only of the script but of some fine acting, it's a bit chilling to hear Daisy, an educated woman, talk about the synagogue bombing, and then about having seen a lynching in her childhood, to Hoke, without her being able to draw parallels between the events. The passive-aggressive dialogue between the two on race throughout the story is disquieting not because it isn't important, but because of Daisy's blindness to their shared situations, and because of her vague notions of race relations - not inviting Hoke to a dinner for Martin Luther King, for example, when she had a spare ticket, because she knows a black person could pop into Ebenezer Baptist Church to hear him and meet him anytime. She means well, but her well-meaningness is that of a Lady Bountiful who doesn't quite get the picture.

What becomes true in the play, as in real life, is that the process of aging both undergo, neither being young at the start of the play, ultimately removes barriers and draws people together, and both Alsedek and Bomar make that aging process, from slowing to stooping to stumbling over words and thoughts, feel very true. They're true enough to it to make anyone watching them feel their own joint pains and backaches as Daisy and Hoke move about the stage.

DRIVING MISS DAISY is a touching, though fortunately not over-sentimental, portrait of two very real people trying to find a balance for working and, for the most part, living together over a period of years, in the midst of a social and political divide. This production navigates that divide nicely indeed, thanks to Alsedek's and Bomar's physical telling of it. At Open Stage of Harrisburg through October 19. Call 717-232-6736 or visit openstagehbg.com for tickets and information.

To post a comment, you must register and login.