(photo credit: Jenny Graham/SCR)

Written by Patrick Chavis

Little Foxes is an older play from the 1930s written by Lillian Hellman, a famous Broadway playwright. It’s wonderful we still have new productions of these old classics. Are some of the ideas dated — most definitely. But they provide us access to the time and the mindset of people living at that time, and that’s well worth exploring. South Coast Repertory’s production of Little Foxes tells this brutal story of the lengths some people will go to obtain power. This production lacks strong direction, and the unfortunate outbreak of COVID-19 sadly affected the quality of performance on stage.

The play chronicles Regina Giddens’s (Shannon Cochran) struggles to compete with her brothers in business during a time when women were still second-class citizens and expected to be homemakers. How far will Regina go to get what she wants?    

Story:

This play falls in a long line of stories about the quest for power and money, what it can do to us, and what it can do to the people we love. Most of all, what it can do to our souls. This is a compelling story; I can only imagine how controversial something like this would have been when it came out. There are very few innocent characters in this play, just people working to fulfill their agendas. The exception is Regina’s daughter, Alexandra Giddens (Jess Andrews), who represents a youth who hasn’t been corrupted by power and can see the damage it has done to everyone in the family.

The direction in this play was very uninspired. While nothing was far from ordinary besides a character having a script on stage to remember their lines, it felt like the actors were just going through the motions at times.

Acting:

Before talking about the acting, let me mention this cast had an outbreak of COVID-19, and four original actors were replaced with understudies for my showing. As they say, the show must go on. Under the circumstances, I think the understudies did a decent job with the material.

Kim Martin-Cotten, who plays Birdie, gave a fantastic performance in this show, and I would never have guessed she was the understudy for the role. I can’t praise her fantastic performance enough. Shannon Cochran, who is part of the original cast, plays the part of Regina beautifully.

The part of Oscar, played by Jamison Jones, had the accent and the greedy, conniving bravado you want to see from the character. Yes!

Set:

While there are multiple theaters at SCR, they use the same stage and a similar set for this production and Appropriate. They even share the same set designer, Lawrence E. Moten III. However, The Little Foxes stage has a  brighter, less gloomy atmosphere. The house appeared smaller and condensed. The set design works. It’s not distracting, but the details that made it work so well in Appropriate aren’t there to the same extent.

The Little Foxes plays Jan 29 – Feb 26, 2023.

Review

7.6 Overall

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Story7.5

Acting8

Set & Design7.5

Costumes8

Entertainment7

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Above Average!