L-R Nicola Lipman, Brian Linds, John Campbell (photo by David Cooper)
Driving smoothly and without a hitch
A smart tale of colour-blind compassion
by Chris Lane
You know just where you’re going with Driving Miss Daisy, but it’s still plenty of fun getting there.
The play opens in 1948 with the eponymous Daisy, an elderly Southern Jewish woman, stubbornly insisting to her grown son, Boolie, that she’s still a perfectly good driver – despite having barrelled into a garage by mixing up the gears. He ignores her protestations and hires her a chauffeur, Hoke, who’s almost as old as Daisy but still knows exactly what he’s doing. Daisy isn’t keen on being driven around – perhaps least of all by a black man.
The affable Hoke works hard to get along with Daisy, and to make her see him as a fellow human that she can relate to. The plot is rather predictable, and yet this production succeeds at making the audience care for the characters and about their story.
