Angry Little Foxes

Foxes are hungry, gnawing creatures. Constantly looking for ways to get ahead, they are also very practical. Jonathan Franzen even alludes to a fox chewing his own leg off to escape a trap in his novel, The Corrections. We can imagine foxes eating their own young if they have to. The Hubbards in Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, fit this stereotype perfectly. The loud, chilling music that opens The New York Theatre Workshop's new production--under the direction of Ivo van Hove--reflects the violently loud, chilling ways in which the Hubbards use people to advance their own class ambitions.

The Hubbard men, Benjamin (Marton Csokas), Oscar (Thomas Jay Ryan), and Oscar's grown son Leo (Nick Westrate) seem to stalk and glower over the Hubbard women in the opening scene when the whole family celebrates a new deal they've struck with a Chicagoan businessman. This deal will turn the Hubbards' $225,000 investment into millions. Regina Hubbard Giddens (Elizabeth Marvel), Oscar and Ben's sister, is giddy with excitement. Van Hove's excruciatingly tactile production has a drunk Regina scratching the velvety carpets and walls with her entire body as if she expects the rich velvet to increase her own worth. Birdie Hubbard (Tina Benko), Oscar's wife, indulges Regina by listening to her dreams of living in a big city like Chicago.

Regina and Birdie's reveries are soon dispelled by the Hubbard men. They are moody because the deal isn't quite complete yet. Benjamin and Oscar still need Regina's share of the initial investment. But she being a woman, and this being the South, they need her husband Horace to officially hand over the money. Sadly for them, Horace (Christopher Evan Welch) is resting up at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. Her brothers' demands stop Regina's daydreaming in its tracks. She immediately falls under their--or, more accurately, Ben's--spell, and joins them in conniving to get Horace's money. Mimicking her brothers' control over others, Regina has no qualms about manipulating her teenage daughter Alexandra (Cristin Milioti) to compel Horace's return. How far Regina will go to secure her fair share of the Hubbard fortune, and what consequences she'll suffer in turn form the central drama of the play.

This tension has been played out regularly since The Little Foxes first premiered in 1939. Revived several times on Broadway with a 1941 Bette Davis movie as well, the story of the Hubbards has survived the Twentieth Century. Hellman's script holds up even ten years into the Twenty-First Century for its exploration of the timeless American tragedy of constant striving. Ben, Oscar, and Regina repeat throughout that there are two types of people in the world: those who get ahead, and those who watch. Its clear that the Hubbards are in the first camp as we learn about Oscar's careful scheming to marry the most blue-blooded girl in town. According to Birdie, "My family was good....Ben Gubbard wanted the cotton and Oscar Hubbard married it for him. He was kind to me, then...Everybody knew what he married me for. Everybody but me."

Like all the other stories, Benko recounts this in a forlorn, matter-of-fact manner. In contrast to the violent physical action, the actors have more sober direction in line delivery that leads to devastating results. A line in Hellman's original play that calls for Regina to scream " I hope you die!, I hope you die soon!, I'll be waiting for you to die!" at Horace is delivered here by Marvel softly as she strokes her husband's head, as if she's actually putting a curse on him. This is indeed the more chilling option.

Initially set in the early Twentieth Century American South when the last of the plantation class was being overtaken by carpetbaggers and industrialists, The Little Foxes could be easily transported to the post-Lehman world where people are once again unsure of their fortunes. But one problem with van Hove's production is that it's temporally confused. On the one hand, a LCD monitor that's used to project the upstairs happenings suggest a modern day setting. On the other hand, the abundant use of the N word, the allusions to trains and cotton suggest the last century.

Since I saw the production in its first preview, there were a few technical glitches as well. The music during scene changes was a little overdone. The final scene ended abruptly when the music swelled to a sudden cut out. I'm hoping they've turned that into a slow fadeout by now. Nonetheless, the "van Hove treatment" makes The Little Foxes an intense viewing experience for modern audiences.

Trust: Don't Trust Those with Trust Funds

Trust, this season's mainstage opener at 2nd Stage Theater, begins on a spare stage. Large and embossed with some kind of metal, it feels like a dungeon. The only item present is a weird contraption hanging from the ceiling. Harry (Zach Braff) wanders on to the stage, just as surprised by these tools as we are. It's his first visit to a dominatrix, and he doesn't know what to expect. What he finds out is that the he is not a huge fan of dominatrix activities, and that dominatrixes are just like normal people. Indeed, Mistress Carol turns out to be Prudence Teller (Sutton Foster) from Harry's high school class. The power roles switch -- the first of many such switches -- as Harry reveals that he knows Prudence's real name.

Harry, it turns out, is quite an accomplished businessman who sold an internet start up for $300 million. He tells Prudence that he's looking to be dominated "on a whim." Perhaps he was bored. The writer Paul Weitz, who is better known for his screenplays (In Good Company), turns this potentially cliched idea of a rich man bored by his own wealth into a deeper character study in Trust. Prudence and Harry, both easily typed upon first meeting as a person who needs to dominate because of daddy issues and a person who needs to be dominated because everything came too easily to him, may actually be just the opposite.

Indeed, Harry, who appears to have an "aw-shucks" quality about him, immediately asks Prudence to help him manipulate his wife. Harry invites Prudence over to help him evaluate his wife without telling her that she's a dominatrix. Is Harry just a thoughtful husband, protecting his wife, or a controlling one?

Prudence does an odd 180 soon after. In one of the next scenes, Prudence asks her boyfriend, Morton (Bobby Cannavale), for rent money. He has just come back from gambling and hands her all his cash. When this isn't enough, she demands the balance. Morton immediately flies into a rage, twisting Prudence's body by her hair, and wrestling her down for some anger-fueled sex. "You love me," Morton repeats. Prudence seems to give in quite easily, making us wonder if she actually enjoys being dominated in this way and losing control over situations.

Prudence and Harry's significant others are just as complicated as their counterparts. Harry's wife Aleeza (Ari Graynor) is more than just a depressed housewife who hasn't accomplished anything. As we get closer to the truth of why she hasn't accomplished anything with her painting, we learn that Harry has played a bigger role in her apathy than it may first seem. Similarly, Morton is a book smart person--"I got a 1560 on the SATS"--who now spends all his time sitting around, trying to make a quick buck.

However, there's no time to develop sympathy for these characters. Although the characters are more complicated than they first appear, Weitz doesn't really reveal their depth until the end, when--in fits of genius--the characters figure each other out. The figuring out, however, felt like an exercise in hide the ball. Like Agatha Christie forcing us to try to figure out her killers' motives all the while hiding vital information from us until the end, Weitz makes each of his characters a therapist for another one, revealing their motivations to themselves and to us. For all the flaws of this style, however, it does make for delicious voyeurism.

In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play Not as Shocking as its Title Suggests

Sarah Ruhl is known to put some quirky, physically implausible things in her plays. In Eurydice, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story, her characters enter a kind of purgatory where they lose their ability to read and write. But Eurydice's father communicates to her from the other side by writing letters, because he is the only dead person who can still write. In Dead Man's Cell Phone, the dead are more clearly present through the presence of a cell phone. In The Melancholy Play Ruhl introduces the idea of two twins separated at birth who are still psychically connected.

Knowing this about Ruhl's work, I was curious to see what fantastical elements she would bring into her latest play In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, which is having its DC premier at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre following a Broadway run last season at Lincoln Center. Curiously enough, the most transgressive thing about this play is all revealed in the title: the vibrator. Other than its insistent presence, The Vibrator Play follows a very traditional story arc in a commonly depicted time period.

It's the end of the Victorian age, and electricity is becoming more ubiquitous. The Givings are a well to do doctor (Eric Hissom) and his wife (Katie deBuys) who are embracing electricity both in their home and in the doctor's work. Mrs. Givings' slowly turning on and off of the lights in the opening scene is the first sign of electricity's vital role in the film and the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Dr. Givings has just purchased a new massage machine that's meant to relieve women of hysteria from build up in their wombs. Yes -- a vibrator.

With the help of his middle-aged midwife, Annie (Sarah Marshall), Dr. Givings begins to administer treatments to a housewife named Mrs. Daldry (Kimberly Gilbert) and an artist named Leo Irving (Cody Nickell). (That feat's thanks to the male version of a vibrator).

As Mrs. Daldry and Irving receive treatments, they let down their guards and reveal their problems to the audience. These problems are not very surprising. Mrs. Daldry is shy and doesn't feel enought; Irving, the free spirited artist he is, feels too much. We in the audience are also forced to get more comfortable with ourselves as we witness Mrs. Daldry's increasingly frequent orgasms. Her first one feels much longer than the three minutes it actually takes. Gilbert convincingly writes on the operating table like a sex novice. She even covers her mouth in embarrassment following the first few unseemly moans. After a few more sessions, though, Mrs. Daldry finds herself coming back for more voluntarily. She begins to dress more colorfully and behaves more confidently. Soon after both Mrs. Daldry and Leo Irving get so stimulated, their orgasms merely drift into the background of the play.

With the subject of sex and orgasms safely in the background, Ruhl draws our attention to the heart of the play: the Givingses' marriage. In some introductory remarks in the program, Ruhl writes that "I'm ultimately more interested in the relationships that expand around [the vibrator], and the whole notion of compartmentalization." Mrs. Givings is dismayed by how her husband separates his doctoring from her, as if she can't understand it, going so far as to lock the room when he leaves home. Mrs. Givings' curiousity gets the better of her, and she breaks in to the next room. Her discovery of the vibrator and break in illuminates a mutual breach of trust that the couple spend most of the play repairing.

While Ruhl makes the characters' motivations and actions perfectly clear, they are based on blunt characterizations. Mrs. Givings is too easily typed as the stifled romantic in Victorian times. Dr. Givings is too easily typed as the strict man of science who can never succumb to emotion. Only one of the Givingses convincingly changes by the end, but not until everyone has endured a lesson on how to see others for who they really are.

Me, Myself, and I

"Me, Myself, and I," which premiered in Princeton at the McCarter Theatre two years ago, is now making its New York premier at Playwright's Horizons. Edwards Albee's latest play--written as he approached his eighties--is not the heavy fare of is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" days. Instead, "Me, Myself, and I" is an absurdist comedy that draws its laughs through wordplay and jokes about dramatic conventions. Indeed, it seems as though the character of the Doctor's only role is to point out double meanings and correct others' grammar to comic effect. As one character threatens that his dad will come back on a carriage led by black panthers to usurp the Doctor's role in the house, the Doctor remains unfazed. He simply asks, "Black Panthers? Even today? I didn't know they were still around."

In addition to being aware of grammar, the characters are excruciatingly aware of the fact that they're in a play--a fact which they enjoy pointing out. From the beginning, Albee allows his characters to speak directly to the audience. Standing alone in front of the proscenium, Otto asks "Do you like my mother?" In one scene depicting a picnic on a nearly bare stage, the Doctor remarks, "It's strange how things just disappear around here."

The reason I haven't mentioned the plot yet is because the plot is not the point. If you must know, the plot involves a set of twins, both of whom are named Otto. The only difference is that one is OTTO (Zachary Booth), the other otto (Preston Sadleir). Their mother (Elizabeth Ashley) is a bit of a crazy person whose husband left her right after she gave birth. Now, twenty-eight years later, she still can't tell the twins apart aside from the fact that one of them loves her and the other doesn't. She also resides with her Doctor. The action in the play revolves around tight few days following OTTO's announcement that he has a new brother, and thus, otto no longer exists.

While this set-up ostensibly could lead to some profound examinations into the nature of self and individuality, "Me, Myself and I" doesn't take itself anywhere near seriously enough to form some grand synthesis on these ideas. Instead, it gently jabs at the audience with its comic approach. Although otto goes around asking people "Do I exist?" in an increasingly shrill manner, we're never in doubt of his physical existence. What we are in doubt of is his ability to be whole without his brother. The relationship between OTTO and otto is only an extreme example of any close human relationship. At one point, OTTO complains that otto is a shadow that constantly stalks him. Any audience member who has felt responsibility for another person can empathize.

Albee is also interested in goodness. OTTO is ostensibly the evil twin, and otto the good. However, neither can fully embody his designated trait. Albee does not take this idea very far, though, and asks the viewers to draw their own conclusions. Overall, Albee's technique effectively asks us to contemplate some deep issues in a way that won't tax your little grey cells.