| Driving Miss Daisy | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Alfred Uhry |
| Characters | Hoke Colburn Daisy Werthan Boolie Werthan |
| Date premiered | April 15, 1987 |
| Place premiered | Playwrights Horizons New York City, New York |
| Original language | English |
| Series | Atlanta Trilogy: Driving Miss Daisy The Last Night of Ballyhoo Parade |
| Genre | Drama |
Driving Miss Daisy is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, from 1948 to 1973. The play was the first in Uhry's Atlanta Trilogy, which deals with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century.
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The original off-Broadway production, which opened on April 15, 1987[1], starred Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman. The production was staged at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd Street in New York, and later transferred down the street to the John Houseman Theatre. Uhry received the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work. The play closed on June 3, 1990, with 1,195 performances.[2]
It was then performed in London's West End in 1988 at the Apollo Theatre, with Dame Wendy Hiller as Miss Daisy Werthan, Clarke Peters as Hoke and Barry Foster as Boolie.[3]
In October 2010, James Earl Jones (as Hoke), Vanessa Redgrave (as Daisy), and Boyd Gaines (as Boolie) appeared in a revival of the play, marking the Broadway debut of the show and the first time Jones and Redgrave have appeared on stage together. The show premiered to rave reviews[4] on October 25, 2010 at the John Golden Theatre; the run was later extended and Driving Miss Daisy closed on April 9, 2011.[5] It recouped its initial investment of $2.6 million on December 21, 2010, making it the first show of the 2010-2011 season to do so.[6] The show was the top-grossing Broadway play in the week ending January 16, 2011.[7]
The production will play at the Wyndham Theare in London's West End with the same cast, beginning previews on 26th September 2011, with its opening 5th October 2011 and is expected to close December 17th 2011. [8]
Uhry adapted it into the screenplay for a 1989 film of the same name starring Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman and Dan Ackroyd, an adaptation which was awarded the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay.
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