There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it.
After a lifetime spent watching her brothers grow rich, Regina Hubbard has had enough of standing around. When a businessman offers the family the prospect of untold wealth and power, a sequence of events unfolds that sets brother against brother, father against son and Regina against the whole pack of them.
A story of greed, ambition and a family on the edge, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes receives a savage new staging by Olivier Award-winning director Lyndsey Turner (The Witches, The Crucible).
__Assisted Performances__
BSL Performance: Tue 7 Jan, 7.30pm.
Captioned Performances: Tue 17 Dec, 7.30pm & Sat 4 Jan,
2.30pm.
Relaxed Performances: Sat 11 Jan, 2.30pm & Thu 16 Jan, 7.30pm.
Sensory Adapted Performance: Thu 9 Jan, 7.30pm.
Audio Described Performances: Thu 19 Dec, 7.30pm & Sat 18 Jan,
2.30pm.
And Regina is such a monster in this production that it’s hard to feel any kind of surprise or sympathy as she manipulates and is manipulated in turn. Like Hellman’s best-known play The Children’s Hour, Little Foxes is a compelling study of female nastiness, and the way that women become hard as polished fingernails under the brutal pressures of the patriarchy and capitalism. It’s undeniably powerful. Still, this production’s uneven performances and dour staging don’t make a particularly seductive case for revisiting it.
There’s a reason Hellman is rarely done. Her plays can look overwrought and dated. The extended Alabama clan featured here make Tennessee Williams’s unhappy families look like the Waltons. But there’s a brutal internal logic to this 1939 work and a timeliness to Turner’s revival. A fine ensemble is anchored by a standout performance from Duff. She mines pathos and empathy from the character of Regina Giddens (nee Hubbard), who could be a monster.
| 1939 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1967 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1981 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1997 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 2010 | Off-Broadway |
New York Theatre Workshop Production Off-Broadway |
| 2017 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
| 2024 | West End |
West End |
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