STAGE REVIEW : Realism, Racism Ride With ‘Daisy’

The history of race relations, as told in textbooks, is punctuated with memorable names and phrases.

Abraham Lincoln. Jackie Robinson. Brown vs. Board of Education.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Life, as it’s lived day to day, is filled with businessmen, retired teachers, chauffeurs--ordinary people just trying to figure things out, often without a map or any clear notion of their destination.

“Driving Miss Daisy” tells the tale of three such characters living out ordinary lives in Atlanta from 1948 to 1973. It seems, on the surface, a simple story about a Jewish businessman who hires a black chauffeur for his unwilling mother, who doesn’t want to admit that she can no longer see well enough to drive for herself.

Under the exquisitely sensitive direction of Jack O’Brien, at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre through Aug. 6, the story takes on a glow that reveals why a sparingly told, 90-minute series of vignettes won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for playwright Alfred Uhry and continues as an off-Broadway hit while being readied for its film debut, starring Jessica Tandy.

Daisy doesn’t merely have difficulty seeing well enough to drive; as a widow who zealously guards her privacy, she has difficulty letting people get close. Her daily companion, chauffeur Hoke, does more than drive her to the Piggly Wiggly for a can of silver polish. He drives her--in a way neither fully anticipates or understands--to see things she has never noticed before: the connection between the bigots who bombed her synagogue and who lynched the father of his childhood friend; the humiliation of Hoke not being able to use the bathroom in a Mobile, Ala., service station because its urinals are meant only for whites.

The play may be set in the past, but it takes on special significance in San Diego’s present. Just as Daisy and her son, Boolie, split over whether to attend a benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. (Daisy goes; Boolie doesn’t because he is afraid he will lose business if clients find out), San Diego itself is divided on what memorial, if any, the city should have for the slain civil rights leader. Within the past three years, Market Street was renamed for King and then, under protest, renamed Market Street. A proposal to name the city’s new convention center after King was also defeated.

And just as Daisy reels over the firebombing of her synagogue, San Diego has witnessed the desecration of one of its temples on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night the Nazis broke the glass in Jewish shopkeepers’ windows) and the firebombing of the San Diego Jewish Times in El Cajon earlier this year.

The very simplicity of “Driving Miss Daisy” makes it deceptive. Uhry doesn’t hand his actors Big Confrontation or Big Resolution speeches. Nearly everything happens in often terse exchanges. Uhry relies on the acting to portray the character growth that’s suggested (rather than overtly stated) by the dialogue.

O’Brien has assembled a gifted three-person cast that makes it all look easy. Tony-, Emmy- and Obie-winning actress Sada Thompson sets her feet firmly as the indomitable and stubborn Daisy, determined to keep things just as they are, then, poignantly, seems to surprise even herself with pockets of vulnerability that were there all along.

Ed Hall, who last excelled in August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” matches Thompson spirit for spirit as Hoke. Irresistible as the sea slapping against Daisy’s rocky resistance to him, Hall’s good-humored Hoke knows he’s living out the story of the oak and the reed. The world changes Daisy, but by bending with the wind, he lasts through every storm with dignity intact.

William Anton takes Boolie and renders him appealing by making of him a man who understands his limitations, even to the point of bowing out gracefully when he can see that Mom prefers Hoke’s company to his.

The minimal sets, by Ralph Funicello--a suspended window in Daisy’s house, two seats for the car--match the spare poetry of the story with quiet eloquence. Peter Maradudin’s lighting brings warmth to a stately atmosphere.

This “Daisy” is not only satisfying in itself, it’s a sure step by the Globe toward the kind of work it does best--intimate dramas on the scale of last year’s “The Cocktail Hour” (another off-Broadway hit) that lures us with laughter into the heart of the human condition and then slowly, subtly, but inescapably, leads us to the truths within ourselves.

At the Old Globe in Balboa Park, Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m.; Sunday matinees at 2; Saturday matinees July 22 and 29 only at 2. Ends Aug. 6. Tickets: $18-25; (619) 239-2255.