They meet when Miss Daisy’s son, Boolie (the excellent Teddy Kempner), hires Hoke to drive for his mother who has crashed her car.
She initially resents his assistance but over the next 20 years learns to treasure him until, by the end, she movingly declares: “Hoke, you’re my best friend.”
The arc of the play is predictable but its incidents are not. It is full of delightful scenes as Miss Daisy and Hoke come to acknowledge their intimate bond both as individuals and as fellow victims of bigotry, be it anti-Semitic or racist.
Sian Phillips and Derek Griffiths give virtuosic performances: she both hilariously imperious and heartbreakingly vulnerable; he exuding wry dignity and suppressed pain.
The play is deftly directed by Richard Beecham on Simon Kenny’s versatile set.
Miss Daisy and Hoke’s intimacy, with its attendant joys and irritations, is nothing to that of Mr and Mrs Passmore, the retired miner and his wife whose 60th wedding anniversary is the setting for David Storey’s The March On Russia.
Like all Storey’s best work, whether fiction or drama, this is deeply autobiographical, a companion piece to his betterknown In Celebration, in which three emotionally damaged brothers return home for their parents’ 40th anniversary.
Here, the siblings are two sisters and a brother and their parents have moved to a coastal bungalow but their affectionate bickering remains the same.
The play is a slow burn but it emits a power that few contemporary dramas can match. This is its first major revival since the National Theatre premiere in 1989 and director Alice Hamilton does it proud. The five-strong cast offers a masterclass in authenticity.
Colin Tierney, Sarah Belcher and Connie Walker subtly display the discomfort of children who feel that they should be closer both to their parents and one another than they are.
As those parents, Ian Gelder and Sue Wallace are faultless: he, profoundly touching in his expressions of thwarted love; she timing every prim putdown to perfection. Marriage takes on a darker hue in Howard Brenton’s The Blinding Light, a chamber piece about the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg during his years in Paris when he forsook writing in favour of alchemical experiments.
Penniless and paranoid, he is visited by his first two wives and revisits his past, either in reality or his imagination.
The play is passionately acted by a cast led by Jasper Britton and Susannah Harker and deftly directed by Tom Littler but, like Strindberg’s experiments, it does not produce gold.
Although shot through with Brenton’s customary wit, it feels like a dutiful tribute from one radical playwright to another and fails to reach the heart of Strindberg’s mystery.
DRIVING MISS DAISY – Brighton Theatre Royal & Tour (Contact venues for prices) VERDICT: 4/5
THE MARCH ON RUSSIA – Orange Tree, Richmond (Tickets: 020 8940 3633/orangetreetheatre.co.uk, £22.50-£25) VERDICT: 4/5
THE BLINDING LIGHT – Jermyn Street, London SW1 (Tickets: 020 7287 2875/jermynstreettheatre.co.uk; £30) VERDICT: 3/5