Driving Miss Daisy is probably best known as an Oscar-winning movie which had two splendid performances by Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. But it actually began as a small-scale one-act play. Lasting only ninety minutes, it opened off-Broadway in 1987, transferred to Broadway, won the Pulitzer Prize, and went on to run for 1,195 performances.
Gently humorous and gently poignant, Alfred Uhry’s mini-drama is a 25-year journey from 1948-1973 in the company of an elderly, rich, Southern Jewish widow and her elderly black chauffeur. She is a retired schoolteacher, haughty, stubborn and quick to bristle. He is wise, patient, dignified and extremely loyal. They live in Atlanta, Georgia, and Uhry observes their developing friendship, as they grow older and older, against a background of the Civil Rights Movement and changing racial attitudes.
It’s a good, sentimental tear-jerker for two big names; and you don’t get much bigger names in the West End these days than James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave. They work together in sensitive tandem; and especially so when he is falsely accused of stealing a tin of salmon. Jones has such warmth and humanity; his tender and touching performance constantly charms and delights. Miss Daisy could not ask for a better friend.