Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy at Wyndhams Theatre was a truly lovely play. This American import starred – ironically – the famed British Actress Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Daisy, and the thunder-voiced James Earl Jones as Hoke, the man Miss Daisy’s son hires to drive her. These two acting legends somehow managed to shed their many other roles and famous personas to totally and completely inhabit their characters.

This was an intimate play, with only three characters and a very minimal set – fitting for the quiet story of a friendship between an aging, obstinate Southern woman and the African American man hired to drive her because she can no longer drive herself. The set consisted of a room with detached pieces of furniture: a staircase, a stove, two desks, a bench, and a few chairs. These set pieces were moved in and out of the audience’s focus on tracks; they were always present on the stage, but their placement and the way in which they were lit indicated where the scene was taking place – a kitchen, living room, office, or car.

The car was arguably the most important piece of scenery, as it symbolized the growing trust between Hoke and Miss Daisy: at first, she won’t even get in the car while he is driver; by the end, many years later, he is no longer her driver, but a trusted friend, driving to visit her in a nursing home. The car was represented by a wheel on a movable stand, a bench (the backseat), and a chair (the driver’s seat), all on a rotating platform to indicate the direction of the car’s movement. The places Hoke and Miss Daisy drove to, or past, were shown by projections on the back wall of the set, and varied from a street, to a grocery store, to a temple. These projections were a fascinating addition: though clearly quite technologically advanced, they were able to create a true sense of place for the audience without dependence on a flashy set that would distract from the personal and gentle nature of the story.

This was a play without any big special effects, any startling sounds, or any huge plot twists. It was not a play full of surprises or thrills, but rather, a play that invited me to be a part of a world – to notice its subtleties, its nuances, its imperfections, without throwing them at me or begging me to see them. I felt Hoke’s frustration as Miss Daisy insisted that he drive at a snail’s pace to “save gas.” I experienced Miss Daisy’s understated surprise when Hoke bought a can of salmon to replace one Miss Daisy thought he planned to simply steal from her. I understood the depth of the bond between the two as Miss Daisy, softened by age, confessed to Hoke that he was her best friend.

The set served the tone of the story perfectly; although looking into the private space of a home or car creates a particularly voyeuristic effect, the simplicity of the set minimized this. The audience members were observers, but never intruders. Despite the fact that this was an American story with two American actors, in a production originally put on in America, there were many British people in the audience who also very much enjoyed the play (a fact attested to by the enthusiastic – and seated – applause at the end). Perhaps we were compelled to buy tickets by the fame of the Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, but we were ultimately won over not by this, but by the universality of the story of unlikely friendship, the perfectly suited set, and the true talent of the actors.