19 AUG – 17 SEPT

DRIVING MISS DAISY.

By Alfred Uhry

Alfred Uhry’s, Pulitzer Prize-winning, Driving Miss Daisy, is set in Atlanta just prior to the civil rights movement, and spans twenty-five years, from 1948 to 1973.

Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, a Southern widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur.

The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed African American, Hoke, whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is not impressed with his employer’s patronising tone and, he believes, her latent prejudice.

Gradually, however, Daisy’s prejudices are broken down and, despite their mutual differences, they grow ever closer to, and more dependent on, each other. Daisy teaches Hoke to read and write, while Hoke encourages Daisy to let go of her insecurities. until, eventually they form an inseparable friendship.

The play is a precise fresco of the time and a magnificent eulogy to friendship.

Uhry also won an Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of Driving Miss Daisy, produced in 1989. The popular film version starred Jessica Tandy, for which she won an Oscar and Morgan Freeman.

Meet the cast

Click the (+) to see more information about the cast

SUSAN TRACY

Susan Tracy was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1979 – 1983 and then again from 1995 – 1999. Roles included ‘Anna’ in Anna Christie, ‘Natasha’ in Trevor Nunn’s production of Three Sisters,

Emilia in Othello, ‘Mistress Ford’ in the Merry Wives of Windsor and ‘Berinthia’ in The Relapse.

She was nominated for Olivier Awards for Anna Christie and Three Sisters.

London credits include: A Chorus of Disapproval (Harold Pinter Theatre); Richard II and Inherit the Wind (the Old Vic); Gone with the Wind (New London Theatre); and Anything Goes (National and Theatre

Royal, Drury Lane).

Other theatre credits include: The Rivals and Zack (Manchester’s Royal Exchange); Playhouse Creatures, The Deep Blue Sea and Rattigan’s Nijinsky (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Old Country (West End & Tour); Eurydice (Whitehall Theatre); Les Liaisons Dangereuses (The Ambassadors); The Secret

Rapture (National); A Passage to India (Lyric Hammersmith, Tour and New York), Long Day’s Journey into Night (Tour); and Much Ado About Nothing (Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park).

Most recently she has appeared in two plays at the Finborough Theatre: Variation on a Theme and A Dream of Perfect Sleep. About Leo (the artist Leonora Carrington) was at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

Television credits include: The Stars Look Down; The Diary of Anne Frank; Pull the Other One; Born and Bred; Minder; Poirot; Midsomer Murders; Ted Lasso; and Manhunt.

MENSAH BEDIAKO

Playing Hoke Coleburn

Mensah trained at the Poor School.

Theatre credits include: Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing (RSC); Leadville in Fisherman’s Friends (Hall for Cornwall); Alec in Invisible Me (Bloomsbury Festival); Laius in Oedipus (Tour); u/s Sam in Master Harold and the Boys (National Theatre); Kapenie in My One True Friend (Tristan Bates Theatre); Preacher/MC in Respect: The Aretha Franklin Songbook (Tour); Badger/Chief Magistrate in The Wind In The Willows (Sixteen Feet Productions); Sir Rex Gunn in Arming The World (Teatro Vivo/Ice and Fire); Martin Luther King in The Mountaintop (FIO Theatre Company/Tour); Prez (P.G. Washington) in The View from Nowhere (Park Theatre); Martin Luther King Jr. in The Mountaintop (Tour); Bill Devaney in The Bodyguard (UK Tour); Pastor Hovis in The Realness (Hackney Downs Studios); Ensemble/Barman & Cover Lloyd in One Man Two Guvnors (National Theatre Productions/UK Tour); Winston in Fast Cuts and Snap Shots (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Ensemble/Standby Charlie Clench/Lloyd/Gareth in One Man Two Guvnors (National Theatre/The Theatre Royal Haymarket); u/s Hoke Coleburn in Driving Miss Daisy (UK Tour); u/s Albert/Kevin in Clybourne Park (Royal Court/Wyndhams Theatre); Mailman in The Water Engine (The Old Vic Tunnels); Ton Ton Julian in Once on this Island (UK tour); u/s Leplee, Doctor & Monsieur Vaimber in Piaf (Donmar Warehouse/Vaudeville Theatre); Preacher in The Harder They Come (Barbican Theatre); Ed Bishop in Floyd Collins (Southwark Playhouse); Showboat (Royal Albert Hall); Tobias and the Angel (Young Vic); African Snow (UK Tour); On the Twentieth Century (Union Theatre); The Realness (Only Connect Theatre); Lewis Mullins in 12:30am (Intermission Theatre); Prostate (Riverside Studios).

Television credits include: Zinska in the upcoming Star Wars series Andor (Disney+/LucasFilm); Uncle Godfearing in In The Long Run (Sprout Pictures/Green Door/Sky One); John Phillips in EastEnders (BBC); Stephen Eli in Chasing Sahdows (ITV).

Film credits include: Leon in Wonder Woman: 1984 (Warner Brothers); Mr Mzuza in Mr Mzuza (Big Bright Lights); Popular Unrest; Frank in The Baseline (Dangerous Productions Ltd); Wee King of Nowhere; The Real Kathy Hayden. Various Commercials, Workshops and Corporate Events.

JOHN SACKVILLE

Playing Boolie Werthan

John trained at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. Awarded the McEuen Prize for the title role in Hamlet at the Scottish Student Drama Festival.

Theatre includes: Staircase (Southwark Playhouse); Go Bang Your Tambourine – Best Supporting Actor at the Off West End Awards (Finborough Theatre); Richard III (Headlong and Bristol Old Vic); Absolute Hell  (National Theatre); Imaginationship (Finborough Theatre); A Day By the Sea (Southwark Playhouse); William Wordsworth (English Touring Theatre); An Inspector Calls (National Theatre); The Winslow Boy (Rose Theatre, Kingston); A Man For All Seasons (Theatre Royal Haymarket); Othello and Volpone (Royal Shakespeare Company); A Cloud in Trousers (Theatre Royal York and Southwark Playhouse); Plunder (Watermill Theatre, Newbury); Our Country’s Good and Cyrano de Bergerac (Nuffield Southampton Theatres, Southampton); Party (Arts Theatre); and Hamlet (Oxford Stage Company).

Film includes Locked Down; Misbehaviour; Into the Mirror – Best European Actor Nomination – New Vision International Film Festival; Amsterdam; The Hoarder; Fossil; The Lost City Of Z; Hampstead; and The Wedding Date.

Television includes The Gulf; Genius: Einstein; The Crown; Royal Wives At War; Doctors; Casualty; House Of Anubis; The Secret of Crickley Hall; Dark Matters; Young John Paul II; The Sunday Night Project; Brief Encounter of an Ordinary Woman; Rosemary & Thyme; Midsomer Murders; The Royal; Heartbeat; and The Bill.

As a director: The Waste Land (Jermyn Street Theatre).

Meet the creatives

Gregor Donnelly

Gregor trained in Set and Costume design on the Motley Theatre Design Course and has designed for theatre, concerts and events all over the UK and Internationally.

Off West End Awards Nominations:

Best Set Design for Rags directed by Bronagh Lagan.

Best Set Design for Peter Pan directed by Jonathan O’Boyle.

Best Costume Design for The Autumn Garden, directed by Anthony Biggs.

Best Set Design and Best Costume Design for Benighted directed by Stephen Whitson.

Set & Costume credits include: Stones in his Pockets (Barn Theatre/Belfast Lyric); Umm Kulthum and the Golden era (Dubai Opera House and London Palladium); Media Suite designer (Olivier Awards 2018- 2022, Royal Albert Hall); Broken Wings (Charing Cross Theatre), Rumi (London Coliseum); Theatre Café Channel episodes 1-5 (streaming Theatre Channel, UK / Playbill, USA); I Loved Lucy (Arts Theatre/Lucille Lortel Theatre, NYC, Woodstock Theatre, NY); Cat – the Play! (Ambassadors Theatre); Jack and the Blingstalk (Harold Pinter); Rags (Park Theatre and Hope Mill Theatre); Snow Queen (Park Theatre); The Astonishing Times of Timothy Cratchit (Hope Mill Theatre); The Jazz Age (Playground Theatre); Daddy Long Legs, Marry Me A Little and Peter Pan (Barn Theatre, Cirencester); Me and My Girl (Frinton on Sea summer theatre); My Son Pinocchio (Southwark Playhouse); Peter Pan (Park Theatre); Shirley Mander (Playground Theatre); Shirley Valentine (Byre Theatre); Damn Yankees (Unicorn Theatre); Laughing Matters, Celia Imrie’s one woman show (Crazy Coques); The Great British Musicals (St James Theatre/London Hippodrome), Dirty Dating (Stockport Plaza/Epstein Theatre, Liverpool); Rumpy Pumpy (Windsor Theatre Royal/Union Theatre); and Bastille’s ‘Doom Days’ album launch concert.

Aundrea Fudge

Aundrea Fudge is an accent/dialect and speech coach from New York. She has degrees in Linguistics and English Literature, a certificate in TESOL, and singing training in Opera and Musical Theatre. She completed her MFA in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2018 and is currently working and residing in London.

She currently teaches at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Arts Ed, and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She has also run both accent and linguistic workshops for the Midlands Voice Conference and currently runs an accent workshop with The Monobox.

Katherine Heath

Katherine Heath is a Voice, Accent and Acting coach. As an acting graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), she has appeared at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), in the West End and worked extensively in theatre, film, television and radio.

She trained as a Voice and Accent Coach on the MFA in Voice Studies course at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD). For the past 15 years she has developed a successful private coaching portfolio of students and professional acting clients. She has taught at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), RADA and Guildhall. She is also a voice, dialect, and dialogue coach for theatre, tv and film.

Katherine’s research specialism and developing pedagogical expertise is in the neurodiverse (Dyslexic/Dyspraxic/AD(H)D) professional actor and acting student; specifically aiding the marginalised learner in voice, accent, and acting work.

Recent Theatre Credits (voice and dialect coach): I, Joan, Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for Measure (Globe Theatre); Headcase (Queens Theatre, Hornchurch); Sirens (Mercury Theatre, Colchester); A Russian Doll (Barn Theatre/Arcola Theatre); GHBoy (Charing Cross Theatre); A Christmas Carol and Twelfth Night (The Bridge House Theatre); The Sweet Science of Bruising (Southwark Playhouse and Wiltons Music Hall); Recent T.V and Film Credits: Alex Rider (Sony/Amazon); and The Gates (Feature film – Studio Atlantic).

Simon Reade

For the Barn Theatre Simon adapted and directed Michael Morpurgo’s An Elephant in the Garden (2021, starring Alison Reid) and wrote the new adaptation of David Copperfield (2021.) His version of Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful is a modern classic and received a critically acclaimed new production at the Barn in 2020.

He previously adapted and directed A Pure Woman (Dorchester Arts), Philip Pullman’s The Scarecrow & His Servant (Southwark Playhouse) and Geraldine McCaughrean’s Not the End of the World (Bristol Old Vic) where he was Artistic Director. Other productions directed at Bristol Old Vic include Cyrano de Bergerac, Nick Dear’s version of The Turn of the Screw, Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter, and Lee Hall’s Two’s Company + Child of the Snow. In 2016 Simon directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Kurdish and Arabic actors in a ground-breaking tour across Kurdistan, Iraq as part of the global Shakespeare Lives programme. His books include Dear Mr Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing Playwright, published by Oberon Books. For the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Simon was Literary Manager & Dramaturg, he directed and co-wrote (with Paul Greengrass) Epitaph for the Official Secrets Act. His other adaptations at the RSC include Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (RSC). His many other plays include: Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain (Theatre Royal Productions UK tour); E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View (ACT Productions UK tour); Pride & Prejudice (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre UK tour/Sheffield Crucible Theatre/Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis/Theatre Royal Bath Productions UK tour); Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger (Theatre Royal Bath Productions UK tour); the TMA Award-winning Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Bristol Old Vic/Polka); Strindberg’s Apartment (The Faction/New Diorama); Jill Tomlinson’s The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark (Bristol Old Vic/Charlottesville) and Philip Pullman’s Aladdin & The Enchanted Lamp (Bristol Old Vic); and Michael Morpurgo’s Twist of Gold (Polka Theatre), Toro! Toro! (Salisbury Playhouse/UK tour) and The Mozart Question (Bristol Old Vic/UK tour).

He produced and wrote the screenplay of R.C Sherriff’s Journey’s End (Lionsgate/BFI 2017, director Saul Dibb, starring Sam Claflin, Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany) and produced and wrote the screenplay of Private Peaceful (Goldcrest 2012, director Pat O’Connor, starring George Mackay, Jack O’Connell.) He also produced, co-wrote and directed Filter Theatre’s debut feature film What You Will (Soda Pictures.)

His new adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man premieres at the Park Theatre, London this autumn.