‘Shut Up Leo!’ Little Foxes @ Young Vic, London

Sold as a #MeToo moment — I really struggled with this Lillian Hellman production. Essentially about horrible rich people trying to get richer and acting horribly as a sibling trio. Nor do they seem to realise that enslavement has been legally cancelled and that everyone is legally equal and free — and that enslaved plantations have been abolished in law. This shows in their attitudes, behaviour and words — it’s abhorrent how they expect the black people around them to cow tow to them — and be grateful. And one of the siblings decides to seek revenge — mostly against one of the more decent men in the play.

This 1930’s melodrama/potboiler (maybe even husband/brother boiler) accelerates as women are treated abhorrently in it. We encounter a sibling trio (two brothers and a sister) who are going on a charm offensive to beguile a new Chicago backer. He’s not as cultured and educated as he appears as he’s seeking to have an affair with the sister, whilst very much married back in Chicago. One of the brothers treats his wife vilely — slapping her in public — a shocking moment when when the slap occurs. Both brothers prefer their women silent and rich, and all the siblings are scheming to marry off the next generation of first cousins to keep the capital in the family — and the women under control. Everyone under control really.

Part Southern Dallas, part American Forsythe Saga, it’s hard to watch and listen to with everyone behaving so badly. They’re also seeking to keep their black servants firmly in their place as though enslavement had never ended — it’s vile. Much is made of being kind and decent — and you go ‘really?’

Thankfully the daughter of the family, Alexandra (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) has heart and gumption and is prepared to stop all the horrible craziness. Equally stalwart are Andrea Davy’s Addie and Freddie MacBruce’s Cal who have to navigate their way through all of this, whilst barely being respected.

Leo (Stanley Morgan), the feckless son of the family, basically gets told to ‘shut up’ at every turn as he seeks to lord it over others and avoid work.

Mostly though, the siblings are trying to con their brother-in-law (their sister’s husband) who is dragged back home to be the money, financing a new industrial venture. However, Horace (a brilliant and tender John Light) is on to all of them and playing them at their own game legally, whilst protecting his daughter Alexandra and rewarding Addie with friendship and financial freedom. Unfortunately, the siblings are trying to get his personal bonds as funds, crash through his privacy and his wife is trying to bring him to an early demise by despising him at every turn, having massive ugly arguments and denying him his life-preserving medicine when it counts.

Brothers Benjamin Hubbard (Mark Bonnar) and Oscar Hubbard (Steffan Rhoddri) bully everyone, neither above using violence coercion to keep their sister and wife down — ad Leo. Equally Regina Giddens (Anne-Marie Duff) uses the same tactics to bully her dying husband Horace, her daughter and get what she wants — a lavish life of luxury in Chicago. At every turn she seems to be using words to trigger a heart attack in her unwanted husband and controller of their household resources. She too had tried to marry money to get a life she wants — which hasn’t quite worked out.

It’s a power tussle of a play where money counts and talks, and people are only defined by their investment capital, their net worth in the hierarchy. Regina’s access to capital is a source of contention as she can only access resources by the grace of her husband and brothers — and for different reasons, they try to cut her out of this. Similarly Birdie (Anna Madeley) was only valued for the capital and connections she brought and essentially horrible Oscar married the money. Since marriage, Birdie has sadly learnt how the Hubbards treat their human capital once it’s banked. There’s an interesting tangent into class here — ‘old’ and ‘new’ money, plantation ‘aristocracy’ and ‘trade’.

We’re meant to celebrate Regina’s ugly triumph — but the powerhouse of the last scene is her daughter standing up to her. We can only hope that Addie and Alexandra are able to get to freedom, to flee to better lives, taking abused, delicate and despairing Birdie with them.

It’s very well acted, but I found it creaky as a play and just couldn’t get on with the content. However, as a Western woman, it does make you very glad that you can access education, a bank account, the vote for yourself. Nor can you predict how the play’s going to end!

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