Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✩✩
by Lillian Hellman, directed by Eda Holmes
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 24-November 1, 2008
"Reaching but Not Quite Grasping"
Ontario last saw a professional production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” (1939) at the Stratford Festival in 1996 starring Martha Henry, Brian Bedford and William Hutt and directed by Richard Monette. The play requires a strong ensemble cast and the assemblage of a group of Stratford’s favourite stars did not accomplish this. By contrast, the current Shaw Festival production does boast a strong ensemble cast and, unlike the Stratford production, here we at least feel that the characters in this family melodrama really are closely related. Yet, the current Shaw production strays from the ideal for a different reason. It seems that director Eda Holmes has not looked very deeply into the play and presents it as a simply conflict of good and evil, when, in fact, it is much more complex.
The focusses on the greed of the three Hubbard siblings in the South of the early 20th century. Regina lived in a time when only males were considered legal heirs so that while her brothers Benjamin and Oscar are independently wealthy, she must rely on the money of her invalid husband Horace for support. Family strife comes to a head when Northern businessman William Marshall wants to strike a deal with the Hubbards to build a cotton mill near their plantations. Regina wants to be an equal player with her brothers who need her husband’s financial participation, but when Horace refuses to help, the brother and the Regina separately resort to desperate acts to secure his money.
Strangely missing from this production is the mounting sense of tension so palpable in the famous 1941 film version directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis as Regina Hubbard Giddens. In particular, Holmes has Laurie Paton maintain an unwaveringly sphinx-like smile, a sort of superior poker face in the struggle with her brothers, daughter and husband, as if she knows that ultimately she will prevail. What is wrong with this portrayal is that that is precisely what Regina does not know. It’s all very well for Holmes to have Paton adopt a queenly air when Regina bargains with her brothers, but what makes the character fascinating, and what Holmes never shows us, is the strain that this pretence has on Regina. In the film Wyler makes it clear that Regina’s moral descent to secure her husband’s money is won only at the terrible cost of alienating her daughter Alexandra. Under Holmes direction there seems to be no great bond between mother and daughter, Alexandra doesn’t seem to realize that her mother is using her and Regina lets Alexandra go at the end without a qualm. Thus, any sense of tragedy is lost along with a vision of the price Regina has to pay to achieve her hollow goals. Holmes also has Paton play Regina’s final scene with Horace so coolly that it loses the improvisational nature that would give it more tension.
It’s true that the play is ultimately a melodrama and that the characters can be divided into good and bad. The duty of the director should be to find the complexity in this scheme. Missing out the internal conflicts in Regina is a major blow. Luckily, Holmes at least shows there are levels of “badness” among the Hubbard clan. Benjamin as played by Ric Reid is simply a pragmatist and if crime is the only means to the end he doesn’t reject it. Oscar, played by Peter Krantz, is thoroughly despicable. He’s egotistical and beats his sensitive wife Birdie, whom he married only for her inheritance. Krantz oozes menace with the constant threat of violence at his every appearance. Oscar’s son Leo is so dim-witted he can be played for comic relief. Holmes avoids that here with Gray Powell, who plays him as a kind of innocent, too morally obtuse to know that stealing might get him into trouble and free of the calculated posturing that characterizes Benjamin and Oscar.
It is clear that Holmes is far more interested in the plight of the play’s “good” characters. Chief among these is Sharry Flett, who gives a wonderful performance as Birdie, both warm in that we see a good-hearted person trapped in a hellish marriage, and chilling in that Flett shows us just how aware Birdie is of the pain she has to endure and of her dependence on alcohol to numb it. David Jansen is fine as Regina’s invalid husband Horace, though his delivery lacks the ironic bite Brian Bedford brought to every line of the role. As Alexandra, Krista Colosimo seems too hearty to have grown up in such a decrepit environment. I would like to have seen more clearly how every step towards money Regina takes pushes Alexandra farther away. Lisa Codrington gives a warm-hearted performance as the Giddens’ servant Addie. Codrington makes her the heart of the Giddens’ home filled with a critical wisdom of white folks’ behaviour garnered from years of careful observation. As the Giddens’ male servant Cal, Richard Stewart shows us a man who decides to comply with white folks’ orders rather than immediately obey them. Norman Browning is good at lending a sense of ambiguity to the Northerner William Marshall so that we are not entirely convinced that the Hubbard siblings should trust him.
Cameron Porteous has designed a handsome period set including an elegantly curving staircase famously important in the climactic scene between Regina and Horace. He gives the Hubbards an appropriate aura of nouveau riche to contrast with the true Southern aristocrat that Birdie is who now seems more like a ghost haunting the play all in white. This may not yet be an ideal production of Hellman’s most famous play but it is still the closest an Ontario theatre has come. For that reason alone, and for Flett’s marvellous performance, it is worth seeing.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Laurie Paton, Sharry Flett, David Jansen and Peter Krantz. ©David Cooper.
2008-10-02
The Little Foxes