Review: Pienet ketut
The Little Foxes is traditional theatre in a good way – the freshness of the interpretation showed the timelessness of the play’s themes
Helsinki City Theatre’s Little Foxes is traditional theatre in a good way. Lillian Hellman’s play has a clear plot and the story is told through smooth dialogue.
In Tuesday night’s performance, skilful direction and fine performance turned the play, which began as a rogue story, into a psychological drama in which human greed and the instrumentalisation of human relationships took on chilling tones.
Hellman’s play certainly aptly describes the position of women in the Deep South of the United States in the 1930s. The freshness of the City Theatre’s adaptation of the play written in 1939 proved that not everything has changed for the better in 80 years, even here in Finland.
Kari Heiskanen’s direction showed the skills of an experienced director. Heiskanen is a master at timing scenes. The performance, with its entrances and exits from the stage, worked like a precision clock.
As a director, Heiskanen has also had something to draw from. Hellman, who died in 1964, was known not only as a writer of successful plays, but also as a brilliant dramaturg.
The drama like the little foxes lives on stage through good acting. The well-written dialogue provided opportunities for interpretation, and the skilled actors of the City Theatre let it burn properly.
Bad guys are also the spice of the performing arts. It is no wonder, then, that Sari Siikander played the first violin as the orchestra’s principal, and she played wonderfully in the role of the evil Regina Giddens.
At the beginning of the play, the character played by Siikander begins to pay off his old debts to his two brothers, Ben and Oscar Hubbard (Seppo Halttunen and Rauno Ahonen).
Together, the siblings have plotted a cunning business to get rich. However, Regina Giddens wants more than her share of the pot. The brothers now have to pay for the fact that, as a girl, Regina has been a second-class citizen in their family since childhood.
Ben Hubbard, played by Halttunen, is an extroverted narcissist by nature, and Oscar Hubbard, played by Ahonen, is an introverted wife-beater. What the brothers had in common was that the morality of both was very flexible when it came to vague transactions.
Regina blackmails her brothers by claiming that her husband Horace Giddens’ (Risto Kaskilahti) money is needed for the planned transaction.
When the money is not forthcoming, the brothers steal Horace Giddens’ bonds from his bank safe with the help of Oscar’s son Leo Hubbard (Paavo Kääriäinen), who works in the bank.
There are no consequences for the brothers for stealing the bonds, because Horace Giddens does not want to bring the case. Regina Giddens, on the other hand, has to face her own guilt at the end of the play, when Horace Giddens dies of a heart attack and his daughter Alexandra (Elviira Kujala) abandons her mother.
Hellman has undoubtedly wanted to say with his play that women can be just as greedy, emotionally cold and cruel as men. Only our attitude towards their actions is different.
And in this respect, nothing has changed. Probably even now, many men who have become rich through questionable means are in Finland as respected businessman geniuses, while Anne Berner , for example, who has also served as a minister, has apparently been hung on an eternal stake of shame in public.
Another main theme of the play was the instrumentalisation of human relationships. At a young age, Regina Hubbard entered into a loveless “marriage of convenience” with the wealthiest banker in town, Horace Giddens, in order to escape the rule of her father and brothers.
The pattern is repeated at the beginning of the play, when the brothers come up with the idea of marrying the Giddenses’ daughter Alexandra Oscar Hubbard’s son Leo. This was to ensure that the acquired property remained with the family.
Oscar Hubbard, on the other hand, once married Birdie (Linda Zilliacus), the daughter of a wealthy family, when the brothers last had an urgent need for financing for their businesses.
Oscar rewards his wife for this good by tyrannizing and abusing her. The wife seeks solace in her ice-cold marriage by drinking.
As a kind of point of comparison, Hellman has written the role of an old and lame servant girl in the play. The relationship between Addie (Ursula Salo) and bank manager Horace Giddens is based on trust, genuine caring and honesty, i.e. it represents the opposite of the instrumentalized relationships in the story.