Photo from left:
Chris Biggs as Boolie Werthan, Meigie Mabry as Miss Daisy, Jordan Hall as Hoke
Coleburn, photo by Scott Ellgen
An epic tale of
the South
by Alec Clayton
Published in the Weekly Volcano, May 2, 2019
 |
| from left: Chris Biggs as Boolie Werthan, Meigie Mabry as Miss Daisy and Jordan Hall as Hoke Coleburn |
Now
playing at Olympia Little Theatre is the Pulitzer
Prize and Tony Award-winning play Driving
Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry.
Recent
conflagrations over the treatment of race relations on stage and screen in BlacKkKlansman and The Green Book cast doubts on the treatment of race in the Oscar-winning
film version of Driving Miss Daisy,
and by extension on the play. Never-the-less, the play is touching and funny
and seems true to life. The three-person cast in Olympia Little Theatre’s is
excellent, and the production moves quickly and smoothly despite some technical
difficulties opening night that will hopefully be corrected for future
productions (they could have used one or two more technical rehearsals). That
and a tawdry set detracts terribly from an otherwise wonderful show. Miss
Daisy’s home has cheap and ugly wallpaper not at all in keeping with what one
might expect in the home of an aristocratic Southern Jewish lady, and there are
moveable folding screens upon which other set locations such as a graveyard are
badly painted and which are often moved about clumsily and unnecessarily.
Seventy-two-year-old
Daisy Werthan (Meigie Mabry) is no longer able to drive safely, so her son
Boolie (Chris Biggs) hires 60-year-old black man named Hoke (Jordan Hall) as
her chauffeur. From the beginning, she fights against having some one chauffeur
her. She is crusty, short-tempered, and has quite obviously spent her life in a
safe little upper-class bubble and knows nothing about the kind of life Hoke
lives. Hoke responds with a winning combination kindness, dignity and
stubbornness, and Daisy and Hoke gradually learn to accept and even love one
another. Hoke drives Daisy from 1948 to 1973. He was driving her to her
synagogue when the 1958 bombing of Hebrew
Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta took place, and her drove her to a
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Prize recognition dinner in 1965.
The play
handles race issues in a surprisingly gentle but understanding manner, with a
plethora of humorous one-liners. One of the most telling and incisive scenes of
racial strife is when Boolie decides not to go to the MLK recognition dinner
because being seen there might adversely affect his business relations.
Mabry is
absolutely believable as Miss Daisy. Her crisp wit, subtle facial expressions
and slow and painful movements as she grows older are beautifully done. Biggs
pushes his depiction of a proud Southern businessman almost to the edge of
being stereotypical without going over that line. In the opening scene he
directs one dramatic speech at the audience when it should have been directed
at his mother, but that mistake doesn’t happen again.
Hall
simply is Hoke in his every movement and expression, beautifully underplayed in
every scene but in a few scenes not projecting well enough to be clearly
understood. Also beautifully underplayed by all three cast members are the
Southern accents. Credit the cast and first-time director Randall Graham for
perfectly handling the accents.
Driving Miss
Daisy
7:25 p.m.
Thursday- Saturday and 1:55 p.m. Sunday through May 12
$11-$15, $2
student discount
Olympia Little
Theatre, 1925 Miller Ave. NE, Olympia, (360) 786-9484,
http://www.olympialittletheater.org
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