THEATER REVIEW / ‘THE LITTLE FOXES’ : Drama Reveals a Family’s Base Instincts

“We’re a very close family,” Uncle Ben, the patriarch of the Hubbard clan, tells a Chicago entrepreneur visiting their small Alabama town.

And he’s right. Ben and his two siblings involve themselves in each others’ lives to a degree rarely seen in modern families.

Then again, with relatives like these, who needs piranhas?

Written in 1939, Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” revealed the all-consuming avarice that strips away any trace of humanity in the Hubbards. In PCPA Theaterfest’s masterful staging, her uncompromising vision has lost none of its chilling impact.

Hellman’s play deals with the rise of the industrialist class that followed the collapse of the agrarian aristocracy in the South after the Civil War.

Without making excuses for the horrors of the South’s prior slavery-based economy, Hellman showed that what replaced it was worse. Like the biblical “little foxes who spoil the vines,” the Hubbards rose to power from humble origins by lying, swindling and exploiting their fellow townsfolk, black and white alike.

Now they’re set to turn on each other as an investment opportunity promises to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Guest actor James Edmondson (from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland) is brilliantly malevolent as Uncle Ben--personifying a true fox in his sly cunning, his ready-to-pounce stance, and even his reddish hair and beard. “Cynicism is only an unpleasant way of saying the truth,” he says with obvious conviction.

Trying to raise the remaining investment funds, Ben is strong-armed into pledging a bigger share of the profit to his sister Regina (Teresa Thuman), who schemes to get the money from her invalid husband Horace (Frederic Barbour).

But when Horace, after a lengthy (and life-preserving) sojourn in Baltimore to nurse a failing heart, is summoned back to the family bosom, it’s clear he has other ideas.

In a remarkably well-detailed performance, Barbour shows us Horace’s awareness of his precarious position from his initial entrance, where he eyes the outstretched arms of his family like a swimmer surrounded by sharks.

Theft, betrayal and murder in the ensuing fracas don’t leave much margin for subtlety. The veneer of Southern gentility so coyly displayed in the opening scene quickly falls by the wayside. Thuman’s Regina, in true Hubbard fashion, steamrollers over all obstacles.

Strong supporting performances are also supplied by Jonathan Gillard Daly as Oscar, the other Hubbard sibling fleeced by Regina’s scheming, and Lisa Paulsen as the frail relic of a once-powerful aristocratic family that Oscar married to gain social status.

Keenly sensitive to the shifting currents in Hellman’s family combat, director Paul Barnes never lets up on the steadily mounting tension. The pacing throughout is brisk and relentless.

Jack Shouse’s meticulous drawing room set and Judith A. Ryerson’s period costumes convincingly evoke a bygone era, and it’s tempting to view the Hubbard’s greed and corruption as bygone evils as well.

If only that were true.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“The Little Foxes” is performed through May 16 at the Allan Hancock College Severson Theatre in Santa Maria, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m,, Sundays at 7 p.m., matinees at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $11 to $16. Running time is 2 hours, 50 minutes. For reservations or further information, call (800) 549-PCPA.