Deena (Tosin Alabi) says early in Dexter Flanders’ Foxes: “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re not being heard.”
There you have it in a sentence. The volatile Foxes is about many human characteristics, but it’s most immediately about the dire human need to be heard and its counterpart: how not being heard is handled by those demanding to be heard and not accommodated.
Deena is daughter to Patricia (Suzette Llewellyn) and sister to Daniel (Raphel Famotibe). They live somewhere in London with Daniel’s white girlfriend Meera (Nemide May), who’s been disowned by her Iranian family because she’s now carrying Daniel’s child. Not living with them but on the premises so often that Patricia and Deena consider him a boarder is Leon (Gbadamosi).
Leon is ostensibly Daniels’s buddy, their bond marked by friendly sparing at which they’re both adept. (Esme Cooper is the fight director.) But one day the horseplay turns to serious fisticuffs and near-death wrestling holds. Unexpectedly, however, Leon relaxes his grip and kisses Daniel smack on the mouth. Daniel, outraged, flees the sofa and room, which, it should be explained is now supposedly meant to represent Leon’s home.
Until that shocking lips-on-lips coup de theatre, Daniel has been a loving husband to Meera as well as an eager expectant father. Their cuddling has regularly occurred and appeared to be genuine. Yet, something has noticeably been bothering him.
This becomes clear when Daniel is suddenly seen in what lighting and visual designer Will Monks and sound designer Josh Anio Grigg create as a tortured dream in which the troubled fellow, grimacing, extends his arms as if being painfully pulled apart.
Next thing the audience observes is Daniel returning to apologize to Leon. Haltingly, he confesses sharing Leon’s affections. The mutual feelings launch a love affair Daniel finds stronger than his with Meera, who immediately senses his changed behavior. She, however, assumes there’s another woman and even confronts Leon about what he knows.
The complications mount, although Patricia, a Bible-loving and church-going housewife, and Deena, an ambitious woman applying for a J. P. Morgan position, aren’t yet aware Daniel has this secret. Another way of phrasing the situation is saying that much is not being heard, until Daniel decides he’ll only attain inner peace if he asks Patricia to hear him out.
Does she? She listens, but not so that Daniel is heard. She repudiates him, quoting the Bible on the abomination that is a man lying with another man. Daniel pleads with Patricia for understanding, as does Deena, who’s overheard the confession.
Nothing doing. Patricia throws him out of the house. In sympathy with her brother as someone valiantly baring his truth, Deena throws herself out of the house and into a new home she can afford on her just-acquired J. P. Morgan salary.
Expecting Leon will take him in, Daniel isn’t heard by Leon, either. Assuming Daniel has named him as the lover, Leon only hears that his exposed down-low life will stain his reputation, maybe even lose him his Foot Locker salesman position.
So, there’s the explosive Foxes situation – “foxes” being the way Daniel and Leon view their libidinous selves. No need or call to go into what follows in terms of who is eventually heard, who remains unheard, and what good or bad occurs when those unheard remain unheard.
Those results are playwright Flanders’ heavy point. The play effectively hits many verbally and physically expressed moments. Director James Hillier as well as fight director Esme Cooper are kept busy attending to the cast’s practically non-stop emotional peaks.
On that subject, this is one of those productions where spectators might wonder how the actors are able to perform it eight times a week. Just watch Llewellyn slicing vegetables as if they’re someone’s neck. Just watch May handling a different knife when coming at Daniel. The demands on Famotibe register most acutely in those tormented out-of-body sequences. Gbadamosi and Alabi supply electricity whenever required.
Just a word on Erin Guan’s set: Whether the challenge to switch from Patricia’s home to Leon’s has been met stays a question mark – with one sofa serving as sofa for two interiors and one two-sided duvet serving both enamored couples. Spectators are asked to accept the awkward changes.
Flanders’ who’s-heard-and-who-isn’t exploration should keep patrons thinking long after they’ve left the two severely stricken abodes. His taking on the crucial subject – a subject germane to all of us but rarely examined – is an inspired achievement.
Foxes opened June 13, 2023, at 59E59 and runs through July 1. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
