THE LITTLE FOXES: Hellman, Donmar W, till 23 November

THE LITTLE FOXES: Lillian Hellman
Donmar Warehouse Theatre, Earlham Street: Tkts 020 7369 1732
Runs: 2h 25m: one interval: till 23 November
Review: Vera Lustig, 25 October 2001

Finely judged revival of Hellman's potentially melodramatic 1939 play, with unforced performances and a promising debut by Anna Maxwell Martin

"Keep it in the family" is the watchword of the Hubbard siblings, a trio of moneyed US Southerners endowed with a limited gene pool and unbounded avarice. Even their children and spouses seem like outsiders.

One can imagine the Hubbards in their foetid nursery: Oscar (Matthew Marsh, squat and pugnacious) a would-be bully; Benjamin (deceptively jovial, David Calder) the devious mummy's boy, and Regina (Penelope Wilton) a precociously well-mannered child, applauded by adults, feared by her peers.

Regina is the play's linchpin, and the action takes place in 1900 in her mansion, with its majestic staircase curving up into the cobwebby gloom. Regina's husband, Horace, is in a sanatorium, and the Hubbards need him to bankroll a business venture. Regina dispatches their young daughter Alexandra to fetch him. Meanwhile, Oscar's ferrety son Leo, a bank-clerk, has fortuitous access to Horace's safe deposit box.

Wickedness is more theatrically alluring than goodness, yet, in this production there are no ciphers, victims or foils. It's a play that echoes and foreshadows many others, and there is something of Orestes about the cadaverous Horace (Peter Guinness) as he re-enters his loveless home. With his compelling stage presence, his seething contempt, his fierce intelligence and his resignation, this Horace is Regina's match. As Alexandra, Anna Maxwell Martin, maturing from ingenue to coldly resolute independent woman, is every inch his daughter.

With that angular, haunted face, there is, I think, no more poignant actor than Brid Brennan. She is perfectly cast as Birdie, Oscar's wife - his social superior and butt of his violence - who has retreated into woozy remembrance of her genteel girlhood. A familiar figure in American drama, yet, Brennan, struggling to regain her battered dignity, clutching at rare moments of happiness, creates her anew.

2001-10-26 09:51:08