The Little Foxes

Play (1939)
by Lillian Hellman

With Laura Linney (Birdie Hubbard), Cynthia Nixon (Regina Giddens), Darren Goldstein (Oscar Hubbard), Michael McKean (Ben Hubbard), Richard Thomas (Horace Giddens), David Alford (Mr. Marshall), Michael Benz (Leo Hubbard), Francesca Carpanini (Alexandra Giddens), Caroline Stefanie Clay (Addie), Charles Turner (Cal)

Three adult Hubbard siblings, Oscar (Darren Goldstein), Ben (Michael McKean) and Regina (Cynthia Nixon), are all angling for money and power that will come from getting into a deal with power-broker Mr. Marshall (David Alford). Regina’s husband, Horace (Richard Thomas), is ill and away from home but due back soon, thinking that his wife, Regina, might actually want to see him for personal reasons, but there are plans afoot to get Horace to sign in on the deal or to surreptitiously make use of his money.

Oscar’s wife, Birdie (Laura Linney), is brutalized, hanging on the edge of her marriage. Alexandra (Francesca Carpanini), daughter of Horace and Regina, is sincerely concerned about her father and horrified by her mother. Leo (Michael Benz), Oscar’s and Birdie’s young adult son, fits in easily with the shenanigans while Addie (Caroline Stefanie) and Cal (Charles Turner), the down-to-earth African-American servants, offer sane support to Birdie, Horace and Alexandra while the Hubbards work their multiple manipulations.

Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play, considered a classic of the modern theater, appears to emerge out of nowhere, its cast of Southern WASPs seeming to be completely unrelated to anything from Hellman’s Jewish familial past. It is, however, deeply related and drawn from Hellman’s refiguring of a family conflict that took place among members of her mother’s mother’s family of successful Southern bankers.

The title, taken from the biblical Song of Songs was suggested by writer and humorist Dorthy Parker. The iconic actress Tallulah Bankhead, herself from a prominent Alabama political family, starred as Regina Giddens in the original production, which had an extensive Broadway run and national tour.

Hellman’s play is ingeniously plotted, its financial intrigues and manipulations evoking a combination of horror and heartbreak. There is a certain night-and-day aspect to the characters who range from being horrible to saintly with not a great deal in between, but that, somewhat surprisingly, does not detract from the considerable rewards of the play.

Many of those rewards, here, can be attributed to the esteemed director, Daniel Sullivan, who manages in this outing, as he has in others, to make the very best of his material.

The cachet of this production is that it features two wonderful actresses, Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon, in the leading roles, which they switch on alternate nights. I saw the one with Nixon as the demonic and imperious Regina and Linney as the vulnerable and besieged Birdie.

Linney, in this role, as in so many others, has a limpid amiability, conveying a transparency of character that reverberates with trust and candor. She is remarkable in the constancy with which she conveys this quality, and to watch her, even in her silent moments, is a treat.

Nixon is an austere and sullenly embittered Regina, quietly malevolent and devious. She gains her character not through histrionic condemnations but from an enduring and committed erosion of trust. Simmering and insidious, Nixon obliquely conveys the sense of the heartless villain.

It would be truly interesting to see Linney and Nixon in the reversed roles, and equally interesting to see how Sullivan plays them in those. The marketing geniuses behind the production have worked magic by drawing one into a particular pairing then making it almost irresistible to see the other.

Richard Thomas is warmly engaging as Horace, the near-victimized husband of Regina who desperately hopes that her appeals to him come from wifely devotion. Alas, there is not a chance of that.

As the servants Addie, Caroline Stefanie Clay, and Cal, Charles Turner, convey what it means to be flexibly humane, wonderfully providing a small glimpse of sanity in the familial maelstrom, offering in concise wordings and resonant gestures some anchor in reality.

As the rest of the awful Hubbards, Darren Goldstein (Oscar), Michael McKean (Ben) and Michael Benz (Leo) hold down dastardly while maintaining the sort of style that makes it insidious rather than obvious. As the poor Giddens daughter, Alexandra, Francesca Carpanini, is sympathetically penetrating and affecting.

The scenic design by Scott Pask is noteworthy.

There is an elegance and dramatic grandeur to this production and clear evidence of a noble directorial hand from Daniel Sullivan. Given that authoritative guidance, the play comes across in its best light, as a contemporary family tragedy with Greek echoes, exhibiting mechanisms that tie its characters to their fates while still offering a sense of the essential humanity subverted by their machinations.

Overall: a well-written play brought to life with distinctively good direction and some great acting.

– BADMan