The Little Foxes Reviews – Starring Anne-Marie Duff at The Young Vic

"Anne-Marie Duff shines in this tale of a rapaciously dysfunctional family's collapse"

"Family tensions, rampant capitalism, excessive drinking, someone falling over: yes, this is definitely a Christmas show"

"Duff embraces Regina’s coldness but lets us feel the rage and frustration that forged it and gives us a moment of fragility at the end. Bonnar is very good too as Ben, sleek in repose but with a raptor’s sudden, terrifying focus. His performance undoubtedly overshadows the understated character work of Rhodri as Oscar."

"But bloody hell, I never thought I’d see The Little Foxes, much less like it... and I basically loved it and also admired the audacity of the timing. Family tensions, rampant capitalism, excessive drinking, someone falling over. Yes, this is definitely a Christmas show."

"Anne-Marie Duff projects brilliant, icy reserve"

"Gripping, subtle performances power this revival of Lillian Hellman’s pungent portrait of a wealthy family torn apart by rampant greed"

"Written in 1939, Lillian Hellman’s Deep South-set drama remains a compelling, satisfyingly twisty thriller of unrestrained greed and dysfunctional family dynamics."

"Director Lyndsey Turner controls the tone of the piece skilfully, gradually and inexorably building tension with an unhurried but never slack pace, allowing occasional moments of hope and levity to shine through the oppressive atmosphere before snuffing them out with one cruel betrayal after another."

"Heading the cast as Regina, Anne-Marie Duff projects a poised, brilliantly icy reserve, interrupted by sharp scowls, eloquent gestures and frequent frustrated eye-rolling as she struggles to take control over her circumstances by any means necessary."

"You can see why this play is not often performed. It’s a savagely dark melodrama about the infighting of the unpleasant Hubbard family, the little foxes who “eat the earth and all the people on it”, in their greed and ambition. It’s arguably over-emphatic and sometimes clunky in its presentation of its themes. But it has at its heart an absolute stunner of a role for an actor – Regina Hubbard... one that Anne-Marie Duff seizes here with charismatic power."

"It’s a remarkably vicious play, and Turner leans into both the Gothic sensibility and the fury."

"Duff plays her as a woman barely in control of her own nervous energy, her hand constantly shooting to her mouth as she tries to disguise her excitement or her fear."

"The Little Foxes may be old-fashioned, but it still packs a desolate and depressing punch."

"Anne-Marie Duff is fascinatingly nasty in Lyndsey Turner’s uneven Little Foxes"

"Duff’s Regina is such a monster in this production that it’s hard to feel any kind of surprise or sympathy, as she manipulates or is manipulated in turn"

"Director Lyndsey Turner strips away any possible hint of cosiness from this story of a self-destructing family of southern landowners – with a result that’s intriguing but hard to love."

"Duff is a fascinatingly nasty creation here, exuding a brittle glamour in her blood-red gown as she dreams of a better life in Chicago, bought with the sweat of underpaid labourers: her chosen survival strategy in this patriarchal clan is to exploit others in turn."

"... Regina is such a monster in this production that it’s hard to feel any kind of surprise or sympathy as she manipulates and is manipulated in turn. Like Hellman’s best-known play The Children’s Hour, Little Foxes is a compelling study of female nastiness, and the way that women become hard as polished fingernails under the brutal pressures of the patriarchy and capitalism. It’s undeniably powerful. Still, this production’s uneven performances and dour staging don’t make a particularly seductive case for revisiting it."

"Anne-Marie Duff is superb as Lillian Hellman’s merciless schemer Regina, picking the men in her life off one by on"

"... I’d wondered if the passage of time might have made its scheming Southerner protagonist Regina more sympathetic. After careful consideration: maybe. A bit."

"In Lyndsey Turner’s elegant revival, Anne-Marie Duff is certainly not in any way camp or hammy. Rather, she is icy-cold and laser focused, an apex predator battling her way through a harsh, dangerous capitalist jungle."

"In a tremendous performance, Duff shows us the rage and frustration that underpin Regina’s actions – she might not have done any of this if society simply let her be a businesswoman. But it’s hard to really take satisfaction in her victory."

"The strangest thing about Turner’s revival is the aggressively beige ’60s boardroom aesthetic to Lizzie Clachlan’s set and costumes."

"Confusing design quirks aside, it’s a chic and steely revival of a play that is both fascinating and (understandably) rarely done."

"Anne-Marie Duff brings sub-zero iciness to this Deep South melodrama"

"Duff is excellent in the Bette Davis role from the 1941 film, but the Young Vic’s staging of this tense family drama doesn’t quite convince"

"Lyndsey Turner’s revival must of course aspire to offer its own slant. Yet I came away from a fuzzy, unfocused two hours (elongated at press night by an unfortunate incident involving a fainting actor that nonetheless affirmed the cast’s fortitude) with the thought that it’d be no bad thing if Duff channelled more of Davis’s air of lethal self-composure in the part."

"Her presence is diminished by an unprepossessing, period-shifted set (mid-century? If so, why?) in which the actors never seem as fully at home as the lurid lime-green roll-arm couch (décor by Lizzie Clachan)."

"But for the evening to work we need to see her meek, parent-pleasing daughter (Eleanor Worthington-Cox’s Alexandra) rise above her mother’s crushing wiles, and leave her, in turn, broken. That trajectory is traced, but not truly felt on the bones. A shame. The Young Vic sorely needs a big hit; but this isn’t it."

"Anne-Marie Duff blazes brightly but The Little Foxes fails to catch fire"

"The story of a verbally vicious and violent family doesn't make our hearts beat faster"

"For all the excellence of the performances, Lyndsey Turner’s production stubbornly refuses to coalesce into a compelling whole, to make our hearts beat a little faster as we watch Regina’s desperate struggle to assert herself in a world where the men hold every trump card. It doesn’t help that the action unfolds on Lizzie Clachan’s long and unlovely set of unadorned beige walls, which provides no anchoring sense of time, place or family history. The greater problem, however, lies with the script’s structuring: too many key events happen offstage and are reported to us second hand, stranding us at one crucial remove from full involvement."

"The commanding Duff only truly lets rip into blazing-ness near the end as Regina’s scheming threatens to unravel before her eyes. I longed to feel more for this character than I actually did"

"Barely one step away from an overcooked melodrama"

"Anne-Marie Duff drips venom as a woman looking to get rich in this production at the Young Vic, but she and the rest of the cast are ground down by the plot"

"Much like Hellman’s anti-isolationist drama Watch on the Rhine, which the Donmar dusted off last year, it’s a period piece with the constant background noise of the author hammering her message into place."

"The study of capitalists on the make is barely one step away from overcooked melodrama. What makes this production all the odder is that Turner has decided that a play set in 1900, when memories of the Civil War were still fresh, should be shifted to sometime in the 1960s."

"Anna Madeley’s character, a sort of proto-Blanche DuBois is, in fact, the most interesting of all of them; it’s just a pity we don’t see more of her. In the end, however, she, like the rest of the cast, is ground down by the gears of the clockwork plot."