Todd rosenthal

presents

By

lillian hellman

Directed by

henry wishcamper

Set Design by

Costume Design by

Lighting Design by

Original Music and Sound Design by

Casting by

Dramaturg

Production Stage Manager

Stage Manager

cast in alphabetical order

Act Two: A week later, early morning

Hellman’s play is set in a time and place that were particularly alluring to its first audiences: the old South at the turn of the 20th century, a society still emerging from the ravages of the Civil War and the turbulent years of Reconstruction. Faced with the final collapse of plantation economy, southern entrepreneurs fought to wrest industry from the urban centers of the North, offering cheap land, cheaper labor and the promise of replenished fortunes. The greed that accompanies (or fuels) such economic movements would not have been unfamiliar to the Depression-era audiences of 1939, as would Hellman’s depictions of other social and political challenges in the world of 1900: the restrictions that confronted women, especially before liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s; the perceived victimization of the lower economic classes by a tiny minority of the wealthy; and the continued nightmare of racial prejudice which had persisted unabated into mid-century American society. Although The Little Foxes was on one hand a glimpse at a bygone era of our country’s history, the underpinnings of that period were still ominously evident to the play’s first audiences—and remain so today, bringing an unexpected and unnerving topicality to the story’s melodramatic twists and turns.

In fact, many elements of The Little Foxes may be more shocking to viewers in 2015 than they were originally—the disturbingly casual domestic violence, the equally casual (and often offensive) racist language and actions of the Hubbard clan, the “greed is good” mentality that belies the elegance of the play’s environs. Although these elements may offend the politically correct sensibilities of our own times, they are crucial to the continuing power of the play. Hellman’s story may have taken place a century ago, but it still contains warnings that must be heeded today, of how the heady prospect of success and wealth can infect and distort the human principles that are vital to our survival.

Robert Falls,

Lillian Hellman sets The Little Foxes in a small southern town in the spring of 1900. The well-to-do Hubbard siblings—Benjamin, Oscar and Regina—aim to compound their wealth by investing in a cotton mill in their community. Their desire for riches overshadows all; Regina especially won’t mind if she exploits hundreds of workers and alienates her own family members, so long as the profits allow her to wear the latest fashions from Europe. While The Little Foxes is a work of fiction, the environment and culture it depicts were part of Hellman’s formative years. Born in New Orleans in 1905, Hellman spent her childhood shuttling between the South and New York City. Her mother’s family served as inspiration for the Hubbards. Hellman biographer Dorothy Gallagher wrote, “As a girl she had listened intently to their dinner table conversations: Intense, lively, competitive discussions about money and business deals. The family table talk provided her with the source material for the slashing, angry wit and rapaciousness of the Hubbards: Money—how it is made, how it is used, how the love of it is the root of social and personal evil—is the idea that powered her play.”

The Hubbards’ proposed business—a cotton mill—will exploit local workers who are desperate for any job in the South’s post-bellum economic slump. Tobacco and cotton, for years the South’s greatest economic assets, proved less financially advantageous without the “free labor” that had previously sustained the South’s economy. And because the South had for so long prospered via an economic system that relied primarily on agriculture, it had not developed cities comparable to those in the North. Its sprawling landscape, punctuated by now-understaffed and crumbling plantations, proved an inadequate infrastructure for rebuilding the economy. By the turn of the century, the South still had not developed the industries that had shaped the North’s economy since 1850. Cotton mills, like most factories, had been built primarily in northern states, so bringing “the machine to the cotton, and not the cotton to the machine” seemed a revolutionary idea that would save on transport costs and provide jobs to a population sorely in need.

But the Hubbards, like many of their real-life historical counterparts, are not aiming to create living-wage jobs that will buoy their town’s economy; they are aiming to make a profit. They know that Southerners expect less compensation than industrial workers in the northern states: one character notes that while the average wage for mill workers in Massachusetts is eight dollars per week, in their area “there ain’t a mountain white or a town nigger that wouldn’t give his right arm for three silver dollars every week.” Indeed, between 1900 and 1920, many businessmen opened cotton mills in the South, and they proved so profitable that the mills in New England soon went out of business.

The play’s central idea—that greed can rot community, family and human beings—transcends the decades that separate us from Hellman’s characters. In their society, antecedent to our own, we can surely recognize what has not changed. And in those characters, flawed as they are, we can see ourselves mirrored back, perhaps improved, but with some faults still intact.

profiles

Assistant Lighting Designer

Antique lighting supplied by Chris and Cindy Allen, Allen's Antique Lighting, Harvard, MA