Hoke...You're my best friend...
The line was delivered with a vulnerable yet loving sincerity that captured the essence of the entire production of Driving Miss Daisy at Meaford Hall on Wednesday evening.
With a simple but visually stunning set, a cast of just three, and the star power of Michael Learned, professional theatre returned to the Hall in grand style.
Wednesday evening was the first of a four night run for the play at Meaford Hall. There is also a matinee scheduled for 2 pm on Saturday.
The staging of Driving Miss Daisy is a joint effort between the Grey Bruce Arts Collective (GBAC) and the Meaford Hall & Culture Foundation. Roger Shank of the GBAC told The Independent prior to the show that the audience was in for a treat.
“In this hall it is such an intimate experience,” said Shank who also said that the Meaford audience would benefit from the fact that the production had developed and improved during the initial staging in Sarnia where the play had a month long run.
The play takes the audience on an fantastic journey that explores friendship, love, and the need for companionship. The story of Daisy- an elderly southern Jewish woman, and Hoke- an African American man, also peels back a layer of the human condition to tackle the often uncomfortable subject of human prejudice.
Delivered with equal parts humour and heartfelt emotion, Learned (Daisy) and her Canadian co-star Walter Borden as Hoke kept the audience engaged and entertained with the end of each scene receiving an appreciative applause.
Meaford Hall General Manager Paul Osborn was pleased to have a top notch production such as Driving Miss Daisy in the opera house.
“We're thrilled,” said Osborn after the show, “This is a real joint effort between The Foundation, Meaford Hall, and the Grey Bruce Arts Collective. Bringing professional theatre back to Meaford Hall was a heck of a challenge, and we can tell right now that it is going to be very successful. We see it as the start of where we are going in the future.”
The audience was equally thrilled and expressed their appreciation with a thundering standing ovation after the lights faded on the final scene.
And in what is most definitely a sign of the times, it didn't take some attendees long to hit the digital world to share their thoughts on the production. Less than an hour after the audience filed out of Meaford Hall, a reader logged on to The Meaford Independent's Facebook page to encourage others to visit the hall and experience this fabulous production.
“F.Y.I. Everyone!! Just got back from the opening performance of "Driving Miss Daisy"...loved it!! Was a great show, very talented cast, well worth the ticket price...many of us grew up watching the 'Waltons', so why not take this opportunity to see Michael Learned in person, doing what she does best, right in our own town,” wrote Meaford resident and TMI reader Renee Carter.
If you don't yet have tickets, there are still some seats available for the remaining performances. And as the play's producer told The Independent after the show, the opportunity to catch this play in Meaford is a special one. Plans are in the works to take the production to Toronto where the price of tickets will be double or triple the $40 ticket price for the Meaford Hall production.
