Review: THE LITTLE FOXES, Young Vic

We love watching a rich family crumble on stage. From Oedipus and his mother to Chekhov’s families fractured by existential angst, to Ibsen’s split by socio-politics paradigm shifts. The Hubbards, the family of former plantation owners in Lilian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, could be the spiritual successor of them all, and like their forebears the nerve-jangling dynamics and subterfuge are conduits for Hellman to examine big picture politics.

It’s the turn of the century in the deep south, brothers Ben and Oscar are raising investment for a cotton factory. Their sister Regina’s dying husband is the final investor, except he doesn’t want to budge; half out of spite for his avaricious brothers in law, and half out of hatred for his wife. Quashing their dreams of industrialised wealth is his final revenge.

There’s a curious anachronism from the outset. Despite the southern drawls, references to horses, and the looming memory of the Civil War, they lounge around in incongruous 60s chic, sepia suits and silky ball gowns. It’s all a bit Hitchcockian, a stylised scalpel to slice straight through psychological fault lines? The Ruby Green sofa almost floats in the centre of Regina’s grey clad living room. It’s a push, but there’s a hint of Kim Novak's infamous dress from Vertigo.

As business dealings grow more shaded with nefarious tones, the set grows colder, an icy corporate board room, walls sucking any residue of warmth out of the family dynamic. The conclusion is clear: they are proto-capitalists paving the way for the new age of mechanised greed. Everything is weaponised, any weakness preyed upon in the name of maximising profit, especially Regina’s gender “you’ll get further with a smile” goads a hawkish Ben. It’s less so much about the fragility of southern morality, but how malleable it is in the hands of those eager to bend it to their will. You half admire their Machiavellian machinations until the acrid stench of hypocrisy laid naked from its rubble begins to stink.

But Lyndsey Turner’s direction is somewhat uncurious to push the hypothesis to its limits. The politics hangs in the air but never summons enough wattage to supercharge Hellman’s fury kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It’s afraid to get its hands dirty, the grim psychosexual rivalries between the siblings are never disentangled, nor the lingering history of slavery haunting the surfaces.

The cast is excellent, helmed by an ice-cold Anne Marie Duff, swaying like a prowling boxer ready for another round. Mark Bonnar's Ben is as graceful as he is evasive, almost balletic despite his razor-toothed cruelty. Steffan Rhodri's Oscar is perfectly tuned as the nebbish middle child Oscar trampled on by his pugnacious siblings. But there isn’t much theatrical glue to hold the ensemble and the wider ideas together. It's case of not being more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts are well polished. 

The Little Foxes plays at the Young Vic until 8 February

Photo credits: Johan Persson

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