Alex: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ handles race & class with great sensitivity

The award-winning Driving Miss Daisy has opened at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius.

In Driving Miss Daisy, we witness an evolving relationship between an elderly southern Jewish matron and her African-American driver in 1940s Atlanta.

New York City-based actress Elizabeth Shepherd plays Miss Daisy. “During this period, turmoil in the south. The whole civil rights movement, the attitude to the black population, and the Jewish population, really in some ways collaborated with that.”

“We were seen as friends of the blacks.”

In an era of racial and class division, this geriatric odd couple reach a level of tolerance and understanding. This production avoids being preachy and syrupy sentimental due to Elizabeth Shepherd’s head-held-high regal bearing, and Walter Borden’s assertive, and intelligent demeanour.

“As we see her heart becomes opened, as time goes on, and in the reformed Jewish temple that she belongs to, the rabbi at the time was a great friend of Martin Luther King’s.”

The play addresses the issues of race and class, but does so with great sensitivity.

Driving Miss Daisy plays at Hamilton’s Dofasco Centre for the Arts through February 22nd.