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Show LETTERHEADS BUSINESS CARDS FLYERS BROCHURES FORMS POSTERS ADVERTISING PMTVV D 0 SETTING DESIGN BUSINESS CARDS BROCHURES FORMS FLYERS LETTERHEADS POSTERS ADVERTISING LABELS LOGOS MAILERS PMTS TYPESETTING DESIGN DDQCB BROCn DESK R I N T I N CTERS 3ING LETTERHEADS BUSINESS CARDS FLYERS BROCHURES FORMS POSTERS ADVERTISING LABELS LOCOS MAILERS PMTS TYPESETTING DESIGN FLYERS BROCHURE: 6 4 9 - 9 0 7 4'ERHEADS POSTERS MAILERS PMTS ADVERTISING DESIGN LOGOS LABELS TYPESETTING PageBI Thursday, April 22, 1982 'Foxes' is semi-excellent, villains need more spirit but by Rick Brough "The Little Foxes" is the tastiest half a loaf I've encountered yet in Park City theatre. Lillian Hellman's play about the corrupt southern Hubbard family is a conflict between victims you can weep for and villains you can hiss at. Among the victims, you will find three of the finest performances of this season. (I won't say which right now. Even critics like to build suspense!) I could almost say, "Go see this play" on the strength of this fine acting, plus the fact the play is great material. (It's a mixture of old-timey melodrama melo-drama and serious meditations medita-tions on predatory evil.) But I don't think "The Little Foxes" can be great without great villains, and here Park City Performances Perform-ances falls short. One is constantly frustrated to see the energy, passion, and poison lacking in the play's heavies, while their counterparts, counter-parts, the innocents, play their roles with wondrous effectiveness. You wonder how director Don Gomes wrought such a weird dichotomy. dicho-tomy. To paraphrase Hellman herself, the play opens as the Hubbard family, which has made thousands, plans a business deal that will bring millions. They've closed agreement to set up Northern North-ern cotton mills in their native south, to be serviced by low-paid labor. The controlling con-trolling interest will be held by the Hubbard siblings, the brothers Ben (Lloyd Stevens), Stev-ens), Oscar (Dick Cummings) Cumm-ings) and their determined,, under-estimated sister Re-gina Re-gina (Barbara Smith). The only hitch is that Regina's share must be supplied through Horace Gid-dens Gid-dens (Steve Stanczyk) her unloved, deathly-ill husband, who bears a strong dislike for the Hubbards' way of doing business. While Re-gina Re-gina uses sweet talk and brow-beating to persuade Horace, the family's scheming schem-ing spins off a few sub-plots, including an attempt by Oscar's weakling son Leo (Richard Scott) to embezzle the needed money; and Oscar's plan to solidify his position in the family by marrying his son to Regina's innocent daughter, Alexandra Alexan-dra (Amy Finegan). Despite all the plotting, Regina should be at the center of the play. Barbara Smith plays her with charm, self-assurance, and even some convincing touches of vulnerability toward the end of the play. Smith makes her a regal, dominating personality. person-ality. But the passion isn't there. Smith doesn't make us feel Regina's hunger she's the one who watched her brothers bro-thers inherit the family money, who plays charming hostess while they wheel and deal. Now she's after her share of the pie. Smith is giving a good character performance, but Regina has always been a star part in the past, it's been played by Talullah Bankhead, Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor. And, traditionally, tradi-tionally, they are paired with a relatively colorless leading man as Horace. When Regina Re-gina unleashes a venomous speech that pushes Horace into a heart attack, it's literally liter-ally a case of one actor's power overwhelming the pther. But that effect doesn't work here, because the actor projecting a star presence isn't Smith. It's Steve Stanczyk. Stan-czyk. She's got to work like hell in future performances to match, him. Gomes should be congratulated congrat-ulated for his effective off-beat casting. Stanczyk is closer to the onset of puberty than middle age, but he rises to the challenge. He has caught Horace's fragile dignity, dig-nity, the anemic anger he can summon up on occasion, And even the way he savors a long-missed cup of Southern coffee. And he seems to ft ' i- j v t is , -.- -i ''X? I -' ' "' ' ' ' ' " " ' ', v " ' ' f The money-grasping Regina (Barbara Smith) rebukes her husband Horace his refusal to participate in a sleazy business deal, as "Little Foxes" reaches spark everyone else to better work. If I had any complaint, I would wish his famous dying crawl up the staircase was slower, to draw out the agony. By the same token, other parts of the play need to be speeded up. Even with two intermissions, it doesn't have to run nearly three hours. The sluggishness shows the most in Act One, where the tensions and corruption should be glimpsed beneath the pleasant dinnertime con- Birdie's faded loveliness and eccentricity. She's pathetic, but never a whine. And in Act Three, she pulls off one of those delightful tricks in an actor's repertoire a sad funny drunk scene that even makes you forget Stanczyk is on stage. Another good contribution is Amy Finnegan's Alexandraa Alexan-draa portrait of innocence that isn't treacly or boring. She is sunny, tender, and ultimately tough. Future Park City productions could benefit from her presence. Her only flaws were a facial were the son of the shrewd Ben, and not Oscar. In group scenes, he stands towards the back of the set, seeming to size up the situation. But Leo couldn't size up a postage stamp. He's supposed to be hysterical hyster-ical in third act, when his theft is discovered yet Scott isn't flustered and it's a mystery why characters refer re-fer to his "screaming" or why they impatiently tell him to shut up. Maybe the biggest disappointment disap-pointment is from Lloyd Stevens, who seems to be photo by Michael Spauiding (Steve Stanczyk) for emotional peak. Richard Jewkes has built perhaps the best set for a Park City play. The suggestive suggest-ive use of wood trim, for instance, gives the impression impres-sion of a set that wasn't thrown up five minutes before you entered the theater. The play continues its run on April 22-24, 29-30, and May 1. Tickets are $6 general admission and $4.50 for members of Park City Performances. Per-formances. For further information, in-formation, call 649-9371. PARK CITY TREE FUND Help make Park City greener. Pick up your choice of greenery on Saturday, May 15 from 9 a.m. to noon at Qty Park. Orders must be in by May 10 at 5 p.m. Send order to Tree Fund, Park City Rec. Dept., Box 1480, Park City, Utah 84060. ASPEN seedling 5 gai. can 4-6 ft. $9.85 gathered 6-8 ft. $14.85 GREEN SPRUCE 3- 3 12 ft. $23.75 4- 4 12 ft. $34.75 6ft. $61.20 5-gal. can BLUE SPRUCE 3- 3 12 ft. 4- 4 12 ft. 6 ft. $875 $28.75 $43.00 $70 20 NAME ADDRESS PHONE Make check payable to Park City Tree Fund ORDER TOTAL AMOUNT ENCLOSED. Thanks (o Tom Ligare, The Newspaper and Great Ideas One is constantly frustrated to see the energy, passion and poison lacking in the play's heavies, while their counterparts, the innocents, play their roles with wondrous effectiveness. versa tion with the Hubbards' partner, Mr. Marshall. There are a lot of crosscurrents cross-currents here Birdie's flights of fancy, Leo's fakish lust, Alexandra's concern for her father that are reined in, squelched, or manipulated manipula-ted deftly by the older Hubbards. The act needs a certain ebb and flow to work, but the pace seems leaden. The actors move so slow at times, you'd think they were suffering from heart disease too. Gomes has a tendency in the first act to plop the actors in chairs and have them talk at each other. (In the first act, they also use the roguish chuckle a bit too much.) The slowness appears in two other scenes: when Oscar and Leo plan the bank embezzlement in Act Two, and in Act Three when the plan backfires and they must hastily act, with Ben, to cover themselves. The pace here should be faster and more hysterical to show the pressure on the three men. The director has done very well, however, at handling the cross-conversations in the play. Gomes' best moment mo-ment is the harrowing scene where the uncles plot downstage down-stage while, upstairs and out of sight, Regina mercilessly harangues her husband. Hellman's script is filled with little indicative actions, and the director has sprinkled sprink-led them into the play. (In the middle of Birdie's piano recital, Ben and Oscar exchange the chagrined looks of two louts posing as gentlemen.) And Gomes has paced the quiet bits with the usual skill especially Alexandra's Alex-andra's rebellion in the last scene. The highlight of the weak first act is Aysha Quinn's excellent portrayal of Birdie, the daughter of fallen Southern South-ern aristocracy who was wooed by Oscar simply to gain possession of her cotton lands. Quinn is utterly captivating cap-tivating when she displays expressiveness that didn't have the same as her vocals; and an ill-fitting wig that bore a certain resemblance to a dead pheasant. (Birdie's hairpiece, however, was good.) Among the male villains, the best was Dick Cummings who played Oscar as a lazily autocratic husband, stretching stretch-ing out a paw to drag Birdie down whenever she threatens threat-ens to become too buoyant and happy. He's the least intelligent Hubbard sibling, and perhaps because of Cummings' past comical roles, he seems almost a sympathetic oaf when Ben and Regina outsmart him. But Cummings should work harder to bring out the mean streak in Oscar the guy who would kill "niggers" if he caught them on his shooting ground. Richard Scott is a good actor, but as Leo, he seems to be headed in a totally wrong direction. The character char-acter is, above all, a callow weakling, but Scott plays him as a cool snake, as if he holding himself in as Ben. Physically, he's great a leonine old bugger dressed in the excellent costuming from Jean Piatt. But he's subdued, when you expect him to be an oratorically extravagant, Kentucky-colonel Kentucky-colonel type. In the early scenes, he seems to be uncomfortably rooted to his chair, as if he discovered the seat was lacquered with Krazy Glue. In the absence of black actors, two Parkites have been made over in "brown-face" "brown-face" to' play the Hubbard servants John Lehmer brings a nice lackaiaisical willingness to the role of Cal, but he's awfully stiff at times. Sandra Cymet didn't seem too comfortable with the role of Addie, though she contributed a nice emotional peak in act two, dragging Alexandra away from the family traumas. Van Martin is energetic, as the business partner but he doesn't seem to be as ingratiated with the Hubbards as the script would indicate. Don't be caught unprepared JUDY M.KIMBALL HANLEY Agent No. 202 Silver King Bank Bldg. Park City, Utah 84060 Bus. 649-8656, Res. 649-7607 FIRE LIFE COMMERCIAL AUTO Cote de Neige at Park City ..-' v.i . j 2V per annum for 3 yrs 13'4 per annum for 5 yrs 134er annum tor 7 yrsj |