Review Roundup: THE LITTLE FOXES at the Young Vic

A story of greed, ambition and a family on the edge, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes receives a savage new staging at The Young Vic by Olivier Award-winning director Lyndsey Turner through 8 February. 

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. See what the critics are saying...

Alexander Cohen, BroadwayWorld: 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 a case of not being more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts are well constructed and polished.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: But it is too slow and static, turning Hellman’s masterpiece into a workman-like production. You do not feel a change of emotional temperature, only the turning cogs of the plot. The scheming around financial percentages and investments is like a business meeting that goes on for too long, and the human drama beneath – the jostling for power and advantage-seeking between siblings – does not quite find its footing.

Helen Hawkins, The Arts Desk: The one theme that does still resonate is the one Alexandra adopts as she plots her escape to a future with music and European culture in it: not to be the kind of person who stands around and watches as injustices are inflicted. But Turner’s production doesn’t really present us with a play focusing on American racism or the iniquities of the South. These issues are in the text but not at this staging’s core. Ditto feminism. What we are left with is a patchwork: a plot about family finances and double-crosses yoked to a melodrama – emphasised by the ominous rumbling sounds that accompany the climax. As a tragedy of failed dreams, though, it doesn't engage.

Alice Saville, The Independent: 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.

Holly O'Mahony , London Theatre: Everyone is miserable in this house, where children become pawns in their parents’ gross games to keep wealth in the family, and women are told a frown never got them anywhere. Duff’s Regina and Worthington-Cox’s Alexandra share a painful final scene, yet there’s no real sense of redemption, which makes this a hard watch. Their performances, though, are tip-top.

Daz Gale , All That Dazzles : Though it was a suitably dramatic press night for unexpected reasons, the expected drama of The Little Foxes was played out in fantastic fashion. Though the production isn’t quite perfect, there is more than enough on offer here to ensure a watch that will captivate you until the very end. Lyndsey Turner’s use of tension and suspense creates an urgent atmosphere that amplifies the savagery of the story. Bolstered by a sensational cast, The Little Foxes may be an ambitious production, but this ambition is more than met with a show that had no issue coming out on top.

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard: 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.

Clive Davis, The Times: A steely-eyed Anne-Marie Duff drips venom as Regina. Steffan Rhodri is persuasive as the charmless Oscar, whose main pastime, apart from dreaming of riches, is bullying his highly strung wife, Birdie, a member of a grand plantation family. Anna Madeley’s character, a sort of proto-Blanche DuBois is, in fact, the most interesting of all of them; it’s just a pity we don’t see more of her. In the end, however, she, like the rest of the cast, is ground down by the gears of the clockwork plot.

Average Rating: 57.5%