Her co-star James Earl Jones will again play her driver and longtime friend in the revival of the Pulitzer-winning drama by Alfred Uhry. Boyd Gaines, who also starred in the Broadway revival, will join his co-stars on the other side of the Atlantic. The production is scheduled to run 12 weeks at a London theatre to be announced. A U.S. national tour is planned for fall 2012.
From its Off-Broadway production in 1987 to the success of the Oscar-winning film version (four Academy Awards, including Best Picture), Driving Miss Daisy, according to producers, "is a timeless, searing, funny, and ultimately hopeful meditation on race relations in America, told through the complex relationship between two of popular culture's most enduring characters."
The play concerns Daisy Werthan, "a widowed, 72-year-old Jewish woman living in midcentury Atlanta, [who] is deemed too old to drive, [and] her son hires Hoke Colburn, an African American man, to serve as her chauffeur. What begins as a troubled and hostile pairing, soon blossoms into a profound, life-altering friendship that transcends all the societal boundaries placed between them."