Tony Winners James Earl Jones & Angela Lansbury Will Bring Driving Miss Daisy Down Under

Two-time Tony winner James Earl Jones will reprise his role as Hoke Colburn in an Australian production of Driving Miss Daisy, opposite five-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury, his recent co-star in Broadway’s The Best Man. According to the Brisbane Courier-Mail, the revival of Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play will begin performances at Brisbane's Playhouse Theatre at Queensland Performing Arts Center on February 5, 2013.

Jones starred as Hoke in the 2010 Broadway revival and subsequent West End transfer of Driving Miss Daisy, opposite Vanessa Redgrave. He earned Tony Awards for Fences and The Great White Hope, and nominations for On Golden Pond and The Best Man. His other Broadway credits include Othello, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Of Mice and Men and The Iceman Cometh, and his many film roles include Clear and Present Danger, Field of Dreams and The Man.

Lansbury has won Tony Awards for her roles in Blithe Spirit, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Dear World and Mame and received nominations for A Little Night Music and Deuce. Other Broadway credits include Hotel Paradiso, The King and I and A Taste of Honey, and she is well known to TV audiences as the star of long-running series Murder, She Wrote.

Driving Miss Daisy follows the relationship between an elderly, widowed Southern Jewish woman named Daisy Werthan (Lansbury) and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn (Jones). The play premiered off-Broadway on April 15, 1987, starring Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman and ran for 1,195 performances before closing in 1990. It was adapted into a 1989 film starring Jessica Tandy and Freeman, which earned four Academy Awards including Best Picture.