First-Rate Cast Captures the Essence of ‘Little Foxes’

By many accounts, Lillian Hellman was a witch on wheels, a world-class prevaricator whose backbiting has become the stuff of legend. Not that an author must empirically experience the world about which he or she is writing, but Hellman’s own reputed ruthlessness may have given her special insight into Regina Giddens, the fading Southern belle whose amoral maneuverings form the crux of Hellman’s period drama “The Little Foxes.” Born a generation earlier, deprived of opportunity and scope, Hellman might have become much like Regina, a destructive dervish laying waste to all in her confined domestic sphere.

Set in 1900, the timeworn “Foxes” could be considered a theatrical chestnut, and the Rubicon Theatre Company production at the Laurel Theatre in Ventura is hardly groundbreaking. However, there’s something soul-satisfying in watching an old standard done again, and done well. Director Jenny Sullivan has a keen ear for tonalities and has assembled a sure-fire cast, led by Linda Purl as the inimitable Regina.

A delicate beauty with ramrod posture and abacus eyes, always calculating her next move, Regina simmers with repressed rage that quite possibly arises from an incestuous relationship with her older brother Ben Hubbard (Philip Davidson)--a subtext that Sullivan wisely keeps to a subterranean whisper. As she glides on stage in Pamela Shaw’s opulent period ensembles, Purl erases the unfortunate memory of Bette Davis’ 1941 film performance. A model of Southern deportment, Purl backs into a chair like a horsewoman mounting sidesaddle. Then there’s that posture, the precise alignment of spine and neck that bespeaks a lifetime of whalebone stays and straight-backed chairs.

Davidson appeals and appalls as Ben, the Machiavellian head of the Hubbard clan. Turn over Ben’s avuncular surface, and you glimpse unpleasant things just before they squiggle out of sight. Duncan Regehr has an iconic quality as Horace, Regina’s tortured, dying husband, whose heroic last stand against the horrible Hubbards proves a pitifully ineffectual sally. As the twittering Birdie, the dipsomaniacal aristocrat married to the abusive Oscar Hubbard (James O’Neil), Karyl Lynn Burns is ultimately moving, despite an occasional tendency to over-sentimentalize an already overwritten role. And Joseph Fuqua is amusingly repellent as the dimwitted Leo, a closet sadist with the glazed eyes of the generationally inbred.

Frank McKown’s lighting and Michael Rapp’s sound are first-rate, as is Tom Giamario’s set, but the problem of actors visibly lurking offstage right, in between entrances, should be addressed.

*

* “The Little Foxes,” the Rubicon Theatre Company at the Laurel Theatre, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 7. $27.50-$32.50. (805) 667-2900. Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes.