Driving Miss Daisy [ペーパーバック]

"Driving Miss Daisy" is a play that shows how somebody can overcome their initial reactions towards a situation and how that situation changed their life forever. Thus is the story of Daisy,a Jewish woman living in Atlanta. Her son, Boolie, hires a chauffer to drive her around the city. Hoke, an african american man that Daisy wants to have no relation with, gets the job.

Opening up in the 1950's and running all the way to 1975, this story tells of the growing friendship between Daisy and Hoke. For the first few years Daisy is embarassed to being driven around by a black man but they soon develop a lasting friendship that will last forever.

"Driving Miss Daisy" tells one thing. It tells about changes in people. Daisy was a Jewish women who wanted absolutely no part with Hoke. Throughout the play Alfred Uhry is able to develop on each character from Daisy and Hoke, to the maid Idella, to Daisy's son Boolie, to Boolie's wife, and everybody else that appears. This is a very short play and Alfred Uhry had to have some skill to pull off the awesome character development in this.

"Driving Miss Daisy" is a story of change in people and of true friendship. This play went on Broadway and became a movie. This play won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and four Academy Awards for the movie. I recommend this play to anybody that would enjoy a touching story of two people that were everything but friends at first who became best friends for life. Pick this play up and you will appreciate this story and the friendship that is depicted in it.

Happy Reading!

"Driving Miss Daisy" won the Pulitzer Prize and hooks you from the first speech. Miss Daisy is such a salty old lady who says exactly what she thinks without apology. I've seen Morgan Freeman's film performance as Hoke and can only imagine how good he must have been on stage in this character. Hoke who comes to be Miss Daisy's driver when she wrecks the car by backing into the neighbor's garage -- sideways -- is so calm. He never talks back to Miss Daisy, but he speaks his mind and then accepts whatever absurd opinion she presents.

The theme seems to be most highlighted in the sequence when they are caught in a traffic jam and realize that the local synagogue which Miss Daisy attends has been bombed. We realize that both Jews and Blacks were targets of Southern hatred; and they then share a subtle but common bond which registers despite Daisy's denials. When Daisy becomes stricken with dementia as she imagines she must find graded papers for her students when she has long been retired, it results in her heading to the nursing home. As the play progresses in a series of scenes, the characters age, winding up with Daisy in a nursing home at age 97 visited by an 85 year-old Hoke who is driven to the visit by Daisy's son Boolie. The play ends with Hoke feeding Daisy a piece of pumpkin pie.

"Driving Miss Daisy" is an excellent character piece. Alfred Uhry was about to give up writing when Daisy struck gold for him. It is an entrancing evening's entertainment both on the page and on the stage. Enjoy!

DRIVING MISS DAISY is the first of three plays writer Alfred Uhry wrote about the Jews living in 20th Century Atlanta. The play opened Off-Broadway with Dana Ivey as Miss Daisy and Morgan Freeman as her chauffeur Hoke--and proceeded to run an astonishing one thousand, one hundred ninety five performances, something unheard of for an Off-Broadway show, particularly a non-musical. In 1989 the play was translated to the screen, with Jessica Tandy as Miss Daisy and Freeman reprising his role as Hoke. The film was extremely popular with both critics and the public, received nine Academy Award nominations and won four: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Makeup, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The play has remained extremely popular. In addition to a much lauded New York revival, the play has had two runs in London and remains a staple of regional, university, and community theatre.

Miss Daisy is an elderly but sharp Jewish woman residing in Atlanta of the segregated south of the late 1940s. After one car wreck too many, her son Boolie insists that she have a chauffeur and hires Hoke for the job--but Miss Daisy rejects this. For one thing, she is--as were many people of her era and class--prejudiced against black people; for another, she perceives in Hoke the end of her autonomy due to her own advancing age. But Hoke is equal to Miss Daisy. He eventually traps her into allowing him to drive for her when he notes that the money Miss Daisy's son has spent to hire him is going to waste. Miss Daisy is inevitably cranky; Hoke is inevitably careful to know his place; but as time passes a cautious sort of friendship springs up between them. Miss Daisy will ultimately recant her covert prejudices, Hoke will ultimately speak out frankly to her. But time passes. The characters--especially Miss Daisy, who prides herself on independence--experience the tragedy of growing older, and by the early 1970s, with Miss Daisy's mind failing, she at last realizes an unexpected fact: over the years Hoke has become her best friend.

The play is performed in a series of quick blackout sketches that move across the decades with great speed but which nonetheless give a glimse into the temper of the times: Hoke is of a generation when blacks were not taught to read; in an act of prejudice Miss Daisy's Temple is bombed, causing Hoke to remember a lynching seen in his childhood; Miss Daisy becomes enthusiastic about Martin Luther King while her son Boolie dare not show support because of the business it would cost him. The play is generally thought of as a comedy, but while it is indeed quite funny, in truth it is a portrait of a changing society and ultimately ends on bittersweet, even tragic note. There is seldom a dry eye in the house whenever it is performed.

Whenever I review a play I like to point out that plays are not really intended to be read: they are intended to be seen live on stage, and it is often difficult for the layman to read a play and grasp how it works when it is on the stage. DRIVING MISS DAISY reads very well, but at the same time people who aren't experienced at reading playscripts may find the way in which the scenes shift a bit difficult to follow on the page. Nonetheless, this is a beautiful, simple play about fundamental issues, and--whether you see it or read it--strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer
For the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre cast and crew of DRIVING MISS DAISY