News Section
Talk about foxy ladies
NIU theater department performs Lillian Hellman’s ‘Little
Foxes’
By Sam Cholke
Weekender Reporter
Sunday afternoon’s performance of Lillian Hellman’s “Little
Foxes” proved what NIU’s theater department is capable of
achieving. The play, as brought to life by 10 undergraduate and graduate
actors, expressed the attainment of power as a force capable of tearing
a family apart.
Addie (Shayla Jarvis) swept across the stage as a broken remnant of
the southern aristocracy. As Addie is mentally and physically abused
by her husband Oscar (G. Scott Brown), the play becomes less a story
about the turmoil surrounding a family and begins to display the roots
of the American Dream.
Rachel Miller infused Regina Hubbard with the ferocious intensity that
eventually would beckon the rise of the middle class. Miller allowed
the character’s own life to envelop the metaphorical role and portrayed
Regina with the overpowering force that Hellman intended.
“I thought it was really well acted,” said Ben Thomas, a
project service aide for Human Resources.
Brown and Hoskuldur Saemundsson brought the brotherly bond between
Oscar and Ben Hubbard to the stage with a clarity that revealed the
inherent rivalry that boiled beneath the surface.
The NIU theater has brought to the stage a stunning production of “Little
Foxes.” The only fault the play suffers from is a chronic ailment
that seems to plague NIU’s theater department. The accents in the
play were scattered at times and inconsistent. Leo Hubbard (Alex Gunn),
son of Oscar, had an accent that clearly marked him as being from a
different region of the South than his father.
When the tension would rise on stage, the dialect of the characters
would slip to a northern tone. Although this could be held against the
play, the emotion that the actors throw into the tense moments all but
makes up for the slight slips.
“It’s all in the family and will stay in the family,”
Ben Hubbard said.
Let’s hope that the theater department can do the same with its
incoming students because the performers in “Little Foxes”
have set the bar high for them.
