Driving Miss Daisy at Theatre Box

The place is the Deep South, the time 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur. The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed black woman, Hoke, whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is not impressed with her employers patronizing tone and, she believes, Daisy's 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 Daisy teaches her to read and write and, in a gesture of goodwill and shared concern, invites Hoke 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 Daisy's 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 possibleand that times and circumstances would ever allow them to publicly admit.

Authors

• Alfred Uhry