Comfortable lives aren’t the usual stuff of theater. All happy families, and that sort of hitch. Nevertheless, Alfred Uhry’s 1987 Driving Miss Daisy has proven to be a keeper on the American stage, and not just because of its amiability. Mixed Magic Theatre is reminding us of that (through March 5) in its new space in Pawtucket.
The story is about a cantankerous elderly widow in Atlanta, a Jewish matron, and the plainspoken African-American man hired to be her driver. In blackout scenes that cover more than two decades, we see her growing more dependent on him as they settle into a sweet, sexless relationship of loving regard. If anyone is interested in using the story to find lessons about race relationships and the commonality of interests by social opposites, they should feel free.
Much of what makes this light drama interesting from a stagecraft standpoint is how, and how well, this play transcends its opportunities for sentimentality. The songs in a musical version of Driving Miss Daisy would be done a la Kurt Weill, not Neil Diamond. A lot of that has to do with Daisy Worthen (Joan Dillenback) being drawn as an actual unpleasant person, the kind that only loved ones willingly put up with. She is not merely a crank with a heart of gold. The best that can be said about the self-centered Miss Daisy is that she isn’t mean.
Right off the bat, we get that Daisy’s defining attribute is a bullheaded refusal to look reality square in the face. An offstage crash greets us before the lights come up, and in scene one her son Boolie (Mauro Canepa) is in her parlor coping with the aftermath. She had her new Packard in reverse rather than drive when she stepped on the accelerator, totaling the car — but it is the car’s fault, not hers, she insists. “You’re a doodle, mama,” we hear from the exasperated Boolie, not for the last time.
The best candidate for the new position of chauffeur in Miss Daisy’s household is Hoke (we never learn his last name), played by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, who also directs. He gets the job because he worked for seven years as driver for a distinguished judge, a friend of Boolie, but the reason he should get the job is that he has the patience of Job.
As soon becomes evident. Hired by the son, he can’t be fired by the mother, but she can refuse to have anything to do with him. For six days he has sat in the kitchen, we learn, keeping company with the black housekeeper, until he finally coaxes Daisy into letting him drive her to the Piggly Wiggly. She was going to do her shopping via bus, but she relents and lets him have the hard time instead. She insists he is driving too fast and wasting gas by doing 19 in a 35 zone, and she directs him to take the inefficient route she has always driven herself. We could easily not notice that he is ignoring her instructions, because the scene ends on a laugh: “We’re there,” he announces, shutting up her yammering about his taking the long way.
