Driving Miss Daisy: Tickets now on sale

Tickets are now on sale to the general public for the Broadway premiere of Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Driving Miss Daisy, starring Tony Award-winners James Earl Jones ('The Great White Hope and 'Fences') and Vanessa Redgrave, directed by David Esbjornson.

The play opens at the John Golden Theatre on 25 Oct 2010, following previews from 7 Oct 2010, playing a sixteen-week limited engagement rhough to 29 Jan 2011.

Driving Miss Daisy: When 'Daisy Werthan' (Vanessa Redgrave), a widowed, 72-year-old Jewish woman living in midcentury Atlanta, is deemed too old to drive, her son hires 'Hoke Colburn' (Jones), 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.

Redgrave's Broadway career includes a Tony Award-winning performance for 'Long Day's Journey Into Night,' and her memorable appearance in Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking,' for which she was also nominated for the Tony Award.

Jones made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning play, 'Sunrise at Campobello' in 1958, and 'Driving Miss Daisy' caps a career that includes his starring roles in the original Broadway production of 'Fences,' for which he won the Tony Award, and his Tony-winning (and Oscar nominated) performance in 'The Great White Hope.'

Further casting and the creative team are still to be announced. Driving Miss Daisy is being produced on Broadway by Jed Bernstein and Adam Zotovich.

The play was produced Off-Broadway by Playwright Horizons, where it played 1,195 performances at the John Houseman Theatre from 15 Apr 1987 - 3 Jun 1990. The production was directed by Ron Lagomarsino, and starred Dana Ivey as 'Daisy Werthan' and Morgan Freeman as 'Hoke Coleburn.'

Driving Miss Daisy was adapted into a screenplay, and released as a movie in 1989. Directed by Bruce Beresford, Morgan Freeman reprised his role as 'Hoke Coleburn' and was joined by actress Jessica Tandy, who played 'Daisy Werthan.' The movie was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won four. It is the only film based on an off-Broadway production ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.