Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, opens Thursday, August 13, and if you haven’t caught this beloved story of friendship, stubbornness, and slow, hard-won trust, now’s your chance to see why it’s remained a favorite for generations.
The play follows Daisy Werthan, a sharp-tongued Southern widow who is none too pleased when her son insists she needs a chauffeur. Enter Hoke Coleburn, a patient, good-humored driver who refuses to let Daisy’s icy first impressions get the better of him. What starts as a battle of wills slowly, warmly, turns into one of the great unlikely friendships in American theater — spanning decades, a whole lot of stubbornness on both sides, and eventually a shared trip to a banquet honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
ALT has put together a cast that’s more than up to the task: Anne Lankford takes the passenger seat as Miss Daisy, with Kyle Gipson as Hoke and Jared Lee as Daisy’s exasperated-but-devoted son Boolie. Terri Wilson directs, with Teri Stringer keeping everything running on schedule as stage manager. Expect plenty of laughs, a few tender gut-punches, and the kind of performances that make a small stage feel awfully big…