The Little Foxes Review

All my life I’ve heard about Broadway plays on television and the radio, I’ve seen ads for them, and I’ve even attended a few during the last few years.  However, Off-Broadway plays always seemed really foreign to me.  I thought that since they weren’t associated with shiny lights and flashy scenery, they must be boring.  The actors and actresses in Off-Broadway shows are hardly even famous–so the play must be a complete waste of time, right? Wrong.

Last night, The Little Foxes, completely changed my mind about Off-Broadway theater.  Even though I was coughing like crazy and the woman sitting next to me was getting upset (Boo to her), I made the best of the play.  I sat throughout the entire play, never thinking about an intermission break of any sort.  Sure, I had to use the ladies room and I was thirsty, but the actors and actresses kept me at the edge of my seat wanting more.

I’ve always been the drama queen in my group of friends so controversy, drama, backstabbing, and so on is interesting and engaging for me and the playwright along with the director did just that.  I thought that the choices that Ivo van Hove made were the reason why many of the viewers seemed pleased at the end of the play.  Although Lillian Hellman originally wrote this play to be set in the 1900s, Ivo van Hove excellently and correctly places it in our modern society without taking away from the social issues that he wanted to stand out.

One might expect to find the women wearing huge ballgown dresses that sweep the floor with extravagant hats, corsets, closed-toe shoes and the men with penguin jacket suits and top hats, but what we saw was the exact opposite.  In those days, the wealthy would wear the aforementioned, but in modern society the wealthy dress with pearls, close fitting dresses, short skirts, high-heels and well-tailored suits.  I actually really like that the director chose these costumes because it helped us really relate to the play.  I’m sure that it would’ve been pretty darn difficult to tell if Birdie was being silly and spontaneous by running out in a big undergarment from the 1900s rather than a skimpy robe that made it all the more surprising.  I  liked that the costume director chose to give Birdie a completely different wardrobe than the rest of the characters.  Birdie was adorned in all red, even up to her shoes and her extremely revealing robe.  In comparison to the other characters who were all wearing very neutral and dark colors, Birdie’s outfits stood out in the pool of darkness.  Like the people who surrounded her, mainly her husband and his siblings, she was different than the rest of them.  She stood out because her motives weren’t to get rich (or die trying) but rather to just be happy with what she has.  Birdie is a representation of what might have happened to Alexandra had she stayed with Regina for the rest of her life.

Aside from the costumes, I believe that the set really played an important part in adding to the greatness of the play.  Since they were rich, one would expect to see fancy furniture, drapery, and ornaments, but we saw, once again, the exact opposite.  Ivo van Hove only used the purple carpeting and gold trimmings to infer the richness of the family.  Purple and gold are usually associated with royalty and so we didn’t need much more for us to see and understand this concept.  I actually liked that the set was pretty empty besides a few small props here and there and a staircase.  It allowed the actors to really get into character with as little distractions as possible.  I think the director chose to put the staircase right in the middle to separate the different arguments that were happening and so that the audience on either side could see different things going on to show the chaos and craziness going on in the house.

Ivo van Hove further depicted the social issues that Lillian Hellman first introduced into her play–race and women.  The black servants were not treated with  much respect by really anyone in the house besides Alexandra.  The rest of them referred to the servants and people of their kind as “Nigger.”   I think it was important that Ivo van Hove kept this word in the play because it criticizes the way the family as well as the whites in general referred to the blacks.  The women were also not treated very fairly–they were beaten (In Birdie’s case to the point where she had a black and blue on her leg and Regina with a cut on her shin).  The women had no say in the business that was going on and Regina didn’t even have access to her husband’s money, which is a lot different than the present day relationships between a husband and his wife.

I thought the title for this play, The Little Foxes, definitely fit the play.  The Hubbards were indeed foxes, but little foxes might just be an understatement.  The way they were rolling around on the floor and scratching and hitting the carpets really made them seem like animals preying on the poor blacks and poor whites in their decision to build the cotton mill.

All in all, I’d have to say that this play really took the opposite of what we all expected and displayed that for the audience, relating, engaging, and most of all entertaining the entire house.  I loved it! :]