Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy is a lovely but remarkably lightweight drama about subjects so potent they could fuel a hundred more ambitious works of theater. Among the issues gently raised and then dropped are black/Jewish relations, racism in the modern South, Jewish assimilation into Christian culture, the effects of the Civil Rights movement on African-American self-consciousness, and the disaster of old age as it affects both the elderly and their children. I wish I could claim that this celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning play really has much to say, in its muted way, about many of these subjects. But the fine production at American Stage – and one could hardly ask for a better version – makes it abundantly clear that, besides noting their existence, Uhry doesn’t want to weigh in with a perspective of his own. Instead, the serious topics pass by — a bit here, a snippet there — and we’re left to imagine that Uhry is as liberal as we are, and would, if pressed, have many interesting opinions. What those are is anybody’s guess. If this play were any more minimalist, it wouldn’t exist.
Still, there’s one story that’s treated with sustained stage time, and that’s the
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.