Driving Miss Daisy
Theater West End, Sanford, Florida
written by Alfred Uhry
directed by Tara Kromer
starring Drew Brown, Eileen Antonescue, Michael Morman
by Carl F. Gauze
Boolie (Drew Brown) manages a small print shop. He rightly feels his mother, Daisy (Eileen Antonescue), should not be driving after a series of minor yet scary accidents. In this Old South, Protestants live at the top of the heap, while Catholics are suspect as they worship the Pope and have strange rituals. Boolie hires the elegant and demure Hoke (Michael Morman) to drive her around town.
While Daisy gouses about “independence” and “how those accidents weren’t her fault,” she eventual accepts Hoke. Their first trips are just to a friend down the block and church on Sunday, but eventual they take a serious road trip fraught with racism and difficulties in getting food on the road in the 1930s. By the end of the story, Hoke is still driving, but he, too is a bit scary behind the wheel. Along the way the Civil Rights movement breaks out, and Miss Daisy almost makes it to the Abernathy Baptist Church for a famous speech. The mood is set by a mist blanketing the stage and the use of pin spots instead of flood lighting. Telephone calls provide a convenient delivery of exposition without dragging us down into the lecture hall. While Hoke bears the load of racism and non-acceptance, those sins bleed over to Boolie’s abuse and isolation in the printing business.
It seems you can be too Black and too Jewish, and we don’t even begin to tackle sexuality here. But the show is charming and focuses on the personal interrelationships that hold us together as a society. It’s a bumpy and awkward system, but it’s the only one we have. ◼
