Having broken records on Broadway and played to sold out audiences in London's West End, David Esbjornson's award-winning, smash hit production has dazzled audiences and critics alike. Winning the 2012 whatsonstage.com Award for Best Revival, this heart-warming play is now on tour across the UK for a strictly limited season. Read more …
Inspiration for the much-loved Oscar-winning smash hit movie, Driving Miss Daisy is the charming, poignant and utterly compelling tale of the unlikely, long-lasting friendship that blossoms between a prickly, elderly southern matriarch, Daisy Werthan (Gwen Taylor) and her kind-hearted chauffeur, Hoke Colburn (Don Warrington) who is employed by Daisy's son Boolie Werthan (Ian Porter).
As the wheels turn and the decades roll by against a backdrop of prejudice, inequality and civil unrest, the pair slowly transcend their differences and ultimately grow to rely on each other far more than either ever expected. Sparklingly funny, irresistibly heart-warming and with a wonderful much-loved cast.
At 90 minutes with no break, Driving Miss Daisy is a tightly focused treat, as three superb actors make a classic script feel as fresh as the day it was written. Magically moving, it’s anything but a bumpy ride.
It’s rare in drama that we have the opportunity to witness two characters interact over such a long period of time. This adaption is just as much of a record of Daisy’s descent from independence into the confused vulnerability of old age, something we often shy away from examining, as it is an allegory about race.
Driving Miss Daisy is an emotional yet unsentimental look at people connecting across divides of lifestyle, belief, culture and race through an interest in life and each other which allows personal growth. This production beautifully illustrates that story, allowing it to shine through and touch its audience.
It’s a light comedy-drama that takes on ideas of race, segregation, justice, equality, companionship and ageing. It’s a modern classic that encapsulates one of the key periods in American history and reflects the raw hope for change in policy and perspective we are seeing in the Middle East now.
If it’s a little too easy, in the end, for British audiences simply to congratulate themselves on never having been part of that bad old segregation business, the play’s subtle exploration of the evolving story of ethnic politics in the United States – and of the links and dissonances between Jewish and African-American experience – remains rich and humane, and deeply satisfying.
Gwen Taylor relishing role in Driving Miss Daisy
King's Theatre, Edinburgh from Tuesday March 5, 2013, until Saturday March 9, 2013. More info: http://www.edtheatres.com/kings
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