A colleague and I trekked out* to the Shaw Festival to see Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939). I suspect that with a weaker cast, The Little Foxes would appear rather schematic, like J. B. Priestley's more anvil-dropping An Inspector Calls (1945) (also playing at the SF, coincidentally). Set quite pointedly in 1900--the characters themselves remark on the historical significance of the date--the play uses the Giddens and Hubbard families to chart the upheavals in postbellum Southern economic history: the financial failure of the old aristocracy, their absorption by an increasingly "acceptable" merchant class ("merger by marriage"), and, in turn, the merchants' alliances with Northern capitalists. Birdie, wed for her family's plantation, dreamily reminisces about trips through the European capitals to listen to music; Regina, frustrated in her attempts to get her hands on cash, fantasizes about Chicago first and Paris as a fashion capital second. Hovering around the edges are the African-American laborers, whose exploitation by the greedy Hubbards troubles Birdie, Regina's daughter Alexandra, and Regina's ailing husband, Horace. (As this review notes, the African-American servants are basically a Greek chorus who "understand the world far better than their masters.") Except for Horace's relationship with Alexandra, the families are hugely (and autobiographically) dysfunctional. The alcoholic Birdie is physically abused by her husband, Oscar, while Regina manipulates her daughter, hates Horace (and her brothers), and ultimately connives at Horace's death, the better to further her own agenda.
In effect, the play maps out three ways for women to respond to a male-dominated capitalist system. Birdie, who longs for people to be "kind," drinks to drown her sadness and rage. But she also hides in nostalgic fantasies about her family's lost plantation, which she represents as a haven of emotional stability and domestic tranquility; as her pride in how her family treated the slaves suggests, she is unwilling to look too closely at the suffering involved in creating this long-lost idyll. She is, to borrow the language used by the ex-slave, Addie, one of those who "stand by" when they see injustices committed. By contrast, Regina feels no compunction about adopting the strategies of her ultra-capitalist brothers, even if it means shortening her husband's life by a few weeks or so. Financially manipulated by first her father and then her husband, Regina desperately wants in to a system that keeps trying to erase her from it. It's no accident that Hellman leaves Regina and her brother Ben in an uneasy balance of mutual blackmail. Regina's daughter Alexandra, however, chooses to leave the family altogether--even if, as Robert Cushman comments, we're left "to wonder whether it heralds
a new era of selflessness, or just more of the same." Will Alexandra remake history by opting out of what Ben and Regina think is the new world order?
The characters who trouble this entire discussion of capitalism are the ex-slaves, Addie and Carl, who are no longer property but are hardly on a par with their white employers (as both are pointedly reminded). It's notable that Hellman defines them by their problematic relationship to money. If they can no longer be bought and sold themselves, they can now be forced to buy (goods and food) and sell (their labor) at highly exploitative prices. Alexandra's escape to wherever depends, in fact, on Horace's decision to do an end-run around the law--both he and Addie know that she cannot be written into the will--by giving Addie a gift of $1700. While this substantial gift does promise to "liberate" Addie from one form of exploitation, the play doesn't really examine whether or not her ongoing loyalty to Alexandra (and Horace's expectation that Addie will help rescue Alexandra) is another.
The Little Foxes is playing at the tiny Royal George, and the staging feels appropriately claustrophobic. The living room is furnished in very Victorian style, complete with uncomfortable-looking chairs and a plush couch, and the set is constructed in such a way that you suspect that the room doesn't get much natural light. (The sole "window" sits high up, on the stairs.) The various knicknacks all seem to be getting in the way (watch the actors try to avoid knocking them over). All of the actors give fine performances, especially Laurie Paton as the ruthless Regina and Sharry Flett as the miserable Birdie. It's well worth a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
*--And, for once, managed to get back through US customs in thirty minutes, as opposed to the usual two hours or so.
