Family dramas don’t come sharper than this. Lillian Hellman’s classic about the business affairs of the Hubbard siblings brims with tension in Lyndsey Turner’s production. A stunning cast does justice to quality writing, making this a real cracker of a show.
Leading the action is the ever-excellent Anne-Marie Duff, who plays the formidable Regina. There’s subtlety as well as high emotion in Duff’s portrayal of this desperate woman, who is ruthless, but perhaps not quite as competent as she might believe. While it’s hard to take your eyes of Regina, Duff and Turner are too good to make her the sole focus.
The men who come up against Regina’s plotting are excellent. Her two brothers – played by Mark Bonnar and Steffan Rhodri – are a great exercise in compare and contrast, showing two chilling sides of the business world. Does Benjamin’s cool pragmatism or Oscar’s stubbornness and stupidity scare you more? And there are two roles for John Light to excel in. Very neat casting has him double as a potential business partner and then transform into Regina’s dying husband. In both cases, it’s his money everyone is after, but Light gives the two characters startling depth.
Turner moves the play away from its original turn-of-the-century setting. Instead of 1900, Lizzie Clachan’s design is late 1960s, with some of the costumes sneaking into the 1970s. Tingying Dong’s sound design is very ‘now’, with some great choral arrangements from composer Phillippe Cato. There are, subsequently, incongruous mentions of horse-drawn carriages along with some very dated attitudes. And it makes the status of the African American servants (further excellent performances from Andrea Davy and Freddie MacBruce) something of a puzzle. Presumably the intention is to bring the audience up short, to move us away from comfy period piece and illustrate how enduring these concerns about big business are.
With the fictional family described as “locusts” more than once, it’s easy to see a critique of capitalism in Hellman’s work. There are nods to how greed impacts a whole community. Arguably, though, there is a cautious conservatism driving this – the motivation is more about taking care than any radical critique.
It is the impact on the family that is at the heart of The Little Foxes. Throughout the play, Regina’s sister-in-law acts as a foil, being from a wealthy old family, now imprisoned in a loveless marriage. It’s a tricky role that Anna Madeley excels in, creating a sympathetic character and revealing alcoholism with super skill. As the play progresses, Regina’s young daughter comes to the fore. How will what she has seen shape her? So final praise goes to Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who takes this role so capably, moving centre stage, showing her character’s development and providing the play’s thrilling final moments.
Until 8 February 2025
Photos by Johan Persson
