Perhaps the most shocking aspect of provocateur Ivo van Hove's slick remounting of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes is that it really isn't that shocking. The man who allowed Hedda Gabler to be humiliated by a flood of tomato juice and employed a hot dog and Hershey's syrup to illuminate The Misanthrope turns almost cuddly in comparison this time around. Sure, a woman gets dramatically socked in the gut three times in a row and another dry humps a wall, but the closest it gets to beverages and condiments is a mimed sip of good 'ol Southern java. This would seem to be a criticism, and even though this critic truly craved some of van Hove's signature eyebrow-raisers (it's a melodrama, guy!), it's quickly discerned that Hellman's stinging indictment of a plantation-owning family's greed ("[The] people who raped the Earth, and those who stood around and watched them do it") really needs no trickery at all to remain a grabber. Continue Reading »