15 November 2006
The Little Foxes
I only knew Lillian Hellman from her first play, The Children's Hour, a fairly bleak story about reputations ruined for spite. The Little Foxes is also about awful people: "people who eat the earth, and people who stand by and watch them do it."
According to Wikipedia, the Bible verse from which the title derives would have been more accurately translated as "Take us the fruitbats, the little fruitbats, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Having grown up among grapevines with plenty of fruitbats, I can tell you that fruitbats are pretty cute and don't really bother anybody. The mistranslation is much more fitting for a play about sneaky siblings scheming to cheat each other out of the profits from their new cotton mill.
Floozy and I were skeptical because of the nearly three-hour running time, and even discussed the possibility of leaving during an intermission if the play didn't deliver. But it turned out to be the "riveting" drama promised on the ACT Web site. I barely even yawned the whole time.