Entertainment
‘Driving Miss Daisy’ Revisited
Playwright, Actor and Old Friend Invoke ‘Hoke’
Chronicle News Services
NEW YORK--It’s two hours before curtain at the John Golden Theater, where the first Broadway production of “Driving Miss Daisy”--the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that became an Oscar-winning film--is in previews.
And in leading man James Earl Jones’ modest-sized dressing room, several me are sharing space with a very distinguished ghost.
Among the living are the venerated actor, 79; playwright Alfred Uhry, 73, who unveiled “Daisy” off-Broadway in 1987; and Mr. Uhry’s childhood friend, Morocco Coleman, 64, who has traveled from Atlanta to attend last week’s opening night.
But the conversation in large part revolves around a fellow who shook off his mortal coil back in 1985.
That would be Will Coleman, Morocco Coleman’s paternal grandfather and the man who inspired Hoke Coleburn, Mr. Jones’ character in the play.
Introduced on stage and played in the 1989 screen adaptation by Morgan Freeman, Hoke is a Black man hired in post-World War II Atlanta to chauffeur and elderly Jewish woman, with whom he forms a close and unlikely bond.
In the new production, Vanessa Redgrave steps into that title role (portrayed by Jessica Tandy in the movie), while another acclaimed theater and film veteran, Boyd Gaines, plays Boolie, her concerned son.
“Who could say no to that package?” Mr. Uhry quipped, explaining why he decided to bring the play to Broadway after more than two decades. “It was never the right combination before.”
Mr. Jones, who had done a benefit reading of “Daisy” years ago, also felt the timing was right.
“Each generation should have a shot at this play, as all great plays should be repeated.”
While Mr. Uhry based Daisy and Boolie on various family members and people he knew growing up, Hoke “is pretty much Mr. Morocco’s grandfather--who was really my grandfather, too.
“I didn’t have a blood grandfather around, and Will Coleman helped raise me from the time I was 9 or 10 years old,” Mr. Uhry said.
“My grandmother lived with us, so he was in my house all the time. I certainly loved him like a grandfather.”
Mr. Uhry remembers the elder Coleman as “a very unusual man--uneducated, but so smart, and so decent. Like Hoke, he wasn’t a passive man; he just understood that he was working for this old lady who would flap around a lot, but who could be very vulnerable underneath that.
“Morocco was telling me that he never saw our grandfather lose his temper.”
Mr. Jones chuckled.
“That’s something I’m still working on. You’ve got to convey the passion without the anger.”
Morocco Coleman, who hasn’t yet seen Mr. Jones’ performance, acknowledged that the actor has big shoes to fill--and not just his grandfather’s. Coleman recalls that his dad “was captivated” watching Freeman in the original. “He said, ‘I never thought I’d see my father walk again,’ but [Freeman] picked up on those nuances that made him unique.
“I think something in the writing must provide a window into that.”
Mr. Jones concedes, “I’ll never be able to do the Hoke that Morgan Freeman did, must as I love it. I have to simply trust in what I see on the page.”
He noted that he and Mr. Freeman both hail from the South, “so, I may share that advantage, if you’d call it that. I certainly knew people like Hoke.”
Mr. Uhry nodded.
“Yeah, you picked up the way [Hoke] speaks right away. The way he said things were beautiful, the cadences. I don’t think anybody speaks like that anymore.”
Mr. Jones smiled.
“Not unless they grew up confined to a farm, without access to TV or radio or newspapers.”
But he also calls Hoke “one of the most graceful men I’ve ever seen conceived by a writer,” noting the “segregation and exploitation” faced by Blacks in that time and place.
“Blacks in the South, they would abide,” Mr. Jones said. “They didn’t die from what they experienced. They survived. And I knew I could play that. Hoke is not an embarrassment to me. He’s not ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy.’ ”
Mr. Uhry confirmed that the man he considered a grandparent “was never ashamed of who he was.
In fact, I think he would love being [remembered] in this play. He was so social--imagine what this would mean to him.”
Morocco Coleman agreed.
“I told Mr. Jones, ‘I can hear him now.’ He’d say, ‘Kiss Grandma’s ankle! ‘He’d be very interested in this production.”
