'Driving Miss Daisy' goes for a Broadway spin

No one expected hail. When it hit, earlier this month in a sudden thunderstorm, it cascaded onto the roof of the Golden Theatre, sounding like a restless audience stomping its feet before a show. But it wasn't before. This was during a preview of Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Driving Miss Daisy."

The initial din subsided, and then came the delicate plink . . . plink . . . plinkplink . . . from the leaky rafters, as raindrops bounced off lights and onto the stage, where Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones . . . never even flinched.

"It kinda killed that scene," says Uhry, who was in the house that night.

But he's overstating it. The dripping was brief. And there's nothing like watching two pros, on stage, faced with an obstacle. This could be a new form of reality show. "Survivor" meets the magic of live theater.

Redgrave plays the flinty Southern widow, Miss Daisy, and Jones, her ever-patient chauffeur, Hoke. The play, which opens Monday night for the first time on Broadway, follows the two through the turbulent Civil Rights era, as they craft an unexpected friendship.

But perhaps you know that already. Perhaps you've seen the film.

"Most people think this production was adapted from the movie," says Uhry. "They don't know it was a play to begin with."

Having to contend with the memory of a popular film isn't the worst thing, he admits. The title will draw people in. But once there, will audiences accept a new Daisy, a new Hoke? And will those too young to remember the original play or film even find the story relevant today?

"When I saw the movie, I absolutely loved Morgan Freeman's Hoke," says Jones. "I in no way wish to compete with his performance and interpretation."

"My feeling is that the audience relaxes into it," says director David Esbjornson. "You don't forget the film, but now . . . the story becomes even richer."

The play, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1987, starred theater vet Dana Ivey and a youngish (at age 50) Freeman. Before "Shawshank." Before he was MORGAN FREEMAN. Both actors were much younger than the characters they played.

The 1989 movie, starring Freeman and Jessica Tandy, received four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Tandy) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Uhry).

Times have changed dramatically since then, says Uhry, yet "sadly there's something very much the same. You'd think now that we've elected an African-American president there wouldn't be so much prejudice. But there's as much as ever - not just African-American but every which way. It's just cleverly hidden."

In an effort to remind audience members what the Civil Rights era was like, Esbjornson projects fuzzy black-and-white images onto the back of the set between scenes.

And then there's Jones, who, at 79, is closer to Hoke's age. The actor was born in Mississippi, and lived through the period.

"I remember men like Hoke," Jones recalls. "They are not 'dumb.' They are from small farms, [with] little need for social skills, and no stimulus for expanded vocabulary."

At times, Jones almost seems to sing his part - "I've got all the tiiiiime in the woooorld," or "'Scuuuuze me for asssskin' " - extending sounds in a dialect that sits somewhere between drowsy and content.

"Their language was never a matter of verbal competition nor style, but simple communication," Jones says, "and they were very creative in the use of English - even to the point of bending linguistic rules. They gave shades of meaning and poetic turns not available to more educated men."

For Uhry, who based the characters on his own grandmother and her driver, watching Jones is like a blast from the past.

"The way he moves his arms, sorta swings them back 'n' forth, the whole cadence - he's just got it," says Uhry.

"Many people can misunderstand a black man who still uses 'dat' and 'dem,' 'yassum' and 'yassuh,' " Jones explains. "These people who misunderstand think only of a demeaning stereotype. Every actor who approaches the role of Hoke after Morgan Freeman is obliged to carry the light he shed on Hoke and to add his own illumination as to who Hoke really is: quite a noble person, albeit without title, and barely a last name."

Redgrave, though less familiar with this period of American history, being British, offers "punch, edge and vitality," says Esbjornson.

The electricity seems palpable when the two heavyweights first step onstage, eyeing each other. For the audience, it's like a tennis match - you can get whiplash trying to watch each of them at once.

"What I was trying to write about was when people take the time to look under what we are and see who we are, then we can accept [each other]," says Uhry. "Instead of, 'Oh, he's a Jew,' 'He's a black,' 'He's a gay,' 'He's a Muslim.' "

Uhry wrote about what he knew - his childhood in Atlanta.

"But I would hope that, like it or not, the message is still pretty vibrant," he says. "Maybe now more than ever."