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.