Plunderers in Magnolia Land

By T.E.Kalem

THE LITTLE FOXES by Lillian Hellman

Presence sometimes takes precedence over performance. That is the case here. Elizabeth Taylor displays more confidence than craft in her Broadway acting debut at the Martin Beck Theater, not that her acting is less than competent. But the audience is not intent on watching her act; it is absorbed in watching her.

At 49, she is something to watch. In air and bearing, she possesses regal command. Her arrant good looks, particularly those thrush-startled violet eyes, fix all other eyes upon her. On glimpsing her, Poe might have written his poem "To Helen" apostrophizing the most beguiling beauty of the ancient world. QE3 (as someone recently nicknamed Taylor) conjures up that grace and grandeur.

Regina is a role that permits her to be both sex-and bitch-goddess, to range from coquetry to carnage. Since The Little Foxes is an out-and-out melodrama, it relies on manipulated emotions and Taylor need not probe authentic feelings. Like all melodramas, Foxes provides playgoers with the grand fun of mentally hissing villains, crying over victims and cheering on heroes.

The joint villain is the Hubbard clan, a trio of plunderers in magnolia land. The family trade is cotton; its god is greed. The younger brother, Oscar (Joe Ponazecki), is a man with a sycophantic spirit and an ugly habit of slapping his genteel, alcohol ic wife Birdie (Maureen Stapleton). The older brother, Ben (Anthony Zerbe), is a cigar-chomping Machiavelli. As their sister Regina, Taylor salivates in her lust for wealth, power and position.

The big chance for the big bucks comes when a wily Chicago entrepreneur (Humbert Allen Astredo) offers the trio a deal to build a cotton mill if the Hubbards will share the costs. The hitch is that Regina's share lies in the bank vault of her husband Horace (Tom Aldredge), who is precariously ill in a Baltimore hospital. He loathes the Hubbards for their vulpine avarice and has long been estranged from Regina. She sends the daughter (Ann Talman), whom Horace loves, to haul him back, and proceeds to cajole and curse him, but Horace is adamant.

An insipid but reptilian nephew, Oscar's son Leo (Dennis Christopher), raids the bank vault and thwarts his uncle. As Horace cradles the all but empty bank box, Regina goads him into a heart spasm and icily denies him the lifesaving pills that are just beyond his reach. After a few more calculated turns of Lillian Hellman's plot screws, Regina proves to be more fearsome than any little fox.

Without dimming Taylor's starshine, Stapleton pilfers top acting honors. As she portrays "22 years without a day of happiness," she is not tearjerking but heart rending. Aldredge comes in a close second. As Horace, he raises his feeble but valiant arm in a salute to the values of the Old South that is being displaced by the New. The throngs who jam the box office may not care. They have booked passage on the QE3, and on its maiden New York voyage that redoubtable vessel will be in full sail till Labor Day.

-- By T.E.Kalem

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