Saw DRIVING MISS DAISY, the NY production with James Earl Jones, Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines. I had a crush on Gaines in the seventies, when he toured with Houseman’s Acting Company. He was very beautiful when he was young, and he’s aged very well. Plus he’s become a really wonderful actor.
It’s a near-perfect production. Such a beautifully written script, deceptive in its directness and simplicity, calling more than most plays for deep, quiet actors. I was a little skeptical about such a powerful presence as Jones (I’d seen him as Othello and as Big Daddy) playing a subservient Negro of the 1950s, but he was bloody brilliant. I don’t know how he made his frame so rounded and small, but he did. And his voice was low and raspy. Plus that gloriously expressive face. What a performance.
Redgrave was letter perfect; looked the part and never lost the accent for a single second. Her face, too, was full of expression. She lost her place in the first scene, and there were two or three seconds that seemed like a half hour before she found the line, but after that she was pretty amazing. Particularly at the end, when she’s in the wheel chair, she was completely believable. The final scene was heartbreaking and heart-filling at the same time.
Gaines… well, he’s become a real actor, in spite of his pretty face. (I’m always impressed when a very pretty actor, male or female, turns out to be more than just their good looks. It’s so easy in the business to become famous by being pretty instead of being good at your job.) His part is actually the most demanding. He has to be transformed from a shallow, over-bearing son, patronizing both his mother and the Negro he hires to be her chauffeur; to a real mensch.
Of course the average English person could not appreciate the huge significance of the white man holding out his hand to shake the black man’s in early 1960s Georgia, but that scene made tears spring to my eyes. It’s followed immediately by the scene where he wins the Businessman of the Year award from the all-white “business association” in Atlanta — significant because he is a Jew — and that’s followed immediately by the scene where Daisy wants him to go to a dinner for Dr. King, and he just can’t bring himself to do it for fear of losing the business his father had built up. It’s so deftly written, and the twists and turns would be unbelievable in the hands of a less skilled actor. I was very impressed, and it’s hard these days for an actor to impress me. After 50+ years of theatre-going, I’m pretty jaded.
