THE LITTLE FOXES
By Lillian Hellman
Directed by Dámaso Rodriguez
Starring Kelly McGillis and Julia Duffy

May 22 – June 28, 2009

Greed knows no time or place is an adage that holds true in 2009 as much as it did in 1900. Hellman masterfully crafts a tale of family politics and corporate greed that is at once dizzyingly deceptive while being devilishly fun. The Hubbards can only be described as ravenous - a family with an uncanny ability to manipulate each other in ways that rival the mega-corporations of today. Discover the lengths the family will go to for success.

Approximate Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes with one 15 minute intermission.

A printable version of the The Little Foxes show program is coming soon!

Quotes and Reviews
Related Links
More about the creative team
     Lillian Hellman
     Dámaso Rodriguez
     Kelly McGillis
     Julia Duffy

Quotes and Reviews

"The Pasadena Playhouse is to be lauded for its riveting revival of one of the iconic works of the American stage!" "Lillian Hellman's exquisitely crafted "The Little Foxes" gives historical perspective to the jaundiced machinations of such contemporary financial villains as Bernard Madoff and Michael Milken."
     - Julio Martinez, Variety

"Critic's Pick!
"A timely tale of greed! The play's social skewering remains satisfyingly fresh."
     - Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times

"Bottom Line: If you're up for venom and fun, "Little Foxes" in Pasadena is for you!" "Lillian Hellman's warhorse about greed, murder and passion in the Old South proves resilient yet again to the ravages of time."
     - Laurence Vittes, The Hollywood Reporter

"Critics' Pick!"
     - Les Spindle, Back Stage West

"GO!"
      - Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly
 

Closing Night Sponsors

Related Links*
Lillian Hellman on PBS.org
The Little Foxes on Wikipedia
The Little Foxes on the Internet Movie Database
“Why Lillian Hellman Remains Fascinating” by The New York Times
About the Cotton Mill
Hellman Wyler Festival
Southern Literary Trail

Bonus Features
Facebook Page
MySpace Page


Lillian Hellman* (Playwright): Lillian became a writer at a time when writers were celebrities and their recklessness was admirable. Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Hammett, Lillian Hellman was a smoker, a drinker, a lover, and a fighter. Hellman maintained a social and political life as large and restless as her talent. While her plays were a constant challenge to injustice, her memoirs were personal accounts of the exciting and turbulent life behind the art.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1905, Hellman saw her young life populated by eccentric and avaricious relatives, who later appeared only thinly disguised in her plays. By the early 1930s, Hellman had found a job as a reader for MGM. Though she found the work dull, it provided her the opportunity to meet a wider range of creative people and to become involved in the artistic and political scene of the times.

Hellman took her first leap into professional writing with a play about two teachers accused of being lesbians by a privileged student. Overwhelmed by the accusation, one teacher kills herself. The Children's Hour was a gripping emotional tale about the abuse of power and its effects. The play was an enormous hit on Broadway (running for more than seven hundred performances), and brought the young playwright instant recognition. She followed it soon after with In Days To Come (1936) and The Little Foxes (1939). The ability to blend strong politics with humane (though not sentimental) stories of individual struggles was one of Hellman's great achievements.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she continued to write plays and increase her political activism. Her anti-fascist works Watch the Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944) directly criticized America's failures to address and fight Hitler and Mussolini in their early years. Blacklisted in the 1950s for her leftist activism, Hellman continued to write and to speak out against the injustices around her. By the early 1960s, however, Hellman started to move away from drama and concentrated on writing her memoirs. Excited over recent student activism, Hellman began teaching. Throughout the rest of her life she would teach at a number of colleges, including both Harvard and Yale.

In 1969 Hellman published An Unfinished Woman, the first of three memoirs that dealt with her social, political, and artistic life and which many associated with the beginnings of the feminist movement.

On June 30, 1984 Lillian Hellman died at the age of seventy-nine. Among the many honors she received were two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, a Gold Medal from the Academy of Arts and Letters for Distinguished Achievement in the Theater, and a National Book Award for An Unfinished Woman.

*Biographical information courtesy of www.pbs.org

Dámaso Rodriguez (Director/Associate Artistic Director):
Dámaso Rodriguez is the Associate Artistic Director of the Pasadena Playhouse.  He is also a co-founder and the resident director of Furious Theatre Company, Artists-in-Residence at the Pasadena Playhouse Carrie Hamilton Theatre.  He directed Pasadena Playhouse's recent hit production of Orson's Shadow by Austin Pendleton and will direct the 2009 production of The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman.  His directing credits for Furious Theatre include:  Hunter Gatherers by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb (Los Angeles Premiere January 2009), The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris (Los Angeles Premiere July 2009, in a co-production with The Theatre at Boston Court), Canned Peaches in Syrup by Alex Jones (World Premiere, Back Stage West Garland Award Honorable Mention for Production), An Impending Rupture of the Belly by Matt Pelfrey (World Premiere, four LA Weekly Theatre Award nominations including Production & Direction), Grace by Craig Wright (Los Angeles Premiere, three Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards including Production & Direction), Back of the Throat by Yussef El Gundi (Los Angeles Premiere), The Fair Maid of the West Parts I & II (World Premiere Adaptation), The God Botherers by Richard Bean (West Coast Premiere), The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute (Los Angeles Premiere), Scenes from the Big Picture by Owen McCafferty (U.S. Premiere), Chimps by Simon Block (U.S. Premiere), The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge, and Saturday Night at the Palace by Paul Slabolepszy (U.S. Premiere, two NAACP Theatre Awards including Best Director). As a co-founder of Furious Theatre, Dámaso received the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Award and the Debut Award from Back Stage West.  He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Kelly McGillis (Regina Hubbard) Pasadena Playhouse debut. Broadway: Hedda Gabler (Hedda) at The Roundabout. Regional: Macbeth (Lady Macbeth), The Duchess of Malfi (The Duchess of Malfi), Mourning Becomes Electra (Lavinia Mannon), As You Like It (Rosalind), All's Well That Ends Well (Helena), Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice), The Merchant of Venice (Portia) all at The Shakespeare Theatre; Measure for Measure (Isabella), Twelfth Night at both Carter Barron Amphitheatre and The Shakespeare Theatre; Peter Hall's production of A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Ahmanson; A Seagull (Nina, directed by Peter Sellars) at The Kennedy Center; The Night of the Iguana (Hanna), Popcorn (Scout) at Waterfront Playhouse. National Tours: The Graduate (Mrs. Robinson). Film: Monkey's Mask; At First Sight; The Settlement; Reuben,Reuben; Witness; Top Gun; Made in Heaven; The House on Carroll Street; Unsettled Land; The Accused; Winter People; Grand Isle; Morgan's Ferry; The Babe; Painted Angels. Education: The Juilliard School of Drama.

Julia Duffy (Birdie Hubbard) Pasadena Playhouse debut. Broadway: Once in a Lifetime. Regional: Twelfth Night (Olivia), Richard III (Queen Elizabeth), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Mistress Page) all at The Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival (Los Angeles); The Enchanted at the Kennedy Center; Three Sisters, Curse of the Starving Class at Missouri Repertory Theatre. Film: Together Again for the First Time, Be My Baby, Dumb & Dumber 2, Intolerable Cruelty, Cutter's Way, Charlotte's Web. Julia is perhaps best known for her television roles as Stephanie Vanderkellen on Newhart (Emmy, Golden Glob and American Comedy Award nominations) and as Allison Sugarbaker on Designing Women. Other television credits include Children in the Crossfire, 7 Things To Do Before I'm 30, Social Studies, The Mommies, Baby Talk, Wizards & Warriors, The Blue and The Gray, as well as guest-star credits on Wizards of Waverly Place, Campus Ladies, Seventh Heaven, Passions, Joey, Listen Up, CSI: New York, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody and many more.



* Biographical information courtesy of the Internet Movie Database.


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