Drawling Vampires

illian Hellman's vitriolic The Little Foxes is on view at Theatre Memphis through November 16th. The chilly drama about a profoundly dysfunctional family -- spiritual eunuchs who are superficially charming, self-involved, uninterested in any truth or morality beyond themselves or in any human relation except control -- is directed by Jerry Chipman.

The Hubbards pretty much run their small south Alabama town at the turn of the century. Though they are not genteel aristocracy, their father was a successful businessman whose exploitation of dirt-cheap labor built a modest fortune as the industrial revolution crept into the South. No longer content with their sizeable incomes or the veneer of graciousness they have built, brothers Ben (Jim Palmer) and Oscar (Barclay Roberts), aided and abetted by their sister Regina Giddens (Irene Crist Flanagan), conspire to make themselves multimillionaires through a business-deal killing.

The Little Foxes can look formulaic and arch to contemporary audiences, unless its bile is made brilliant by performances demanding something extraordinary from the actors playing these characters. The Theatre Memphis production is never less than highly competent, and the work of at least some of its cast attains the smooth ferocity the Hubbards need to break through the proscenium and really walk amongst us.

As Ben, Palmer gives, arguably, the most faceted, assured, and elegant performance of his career. A man used to getting his way, Ben's first option is always to dupe his victim with a gracious smile, a gentlemanly witticism; failing that, he'll enjoy going for the throat. He intends to win, at any cost. Selling his soul to do so is no disincentive for Ben. Smart, articulate, capable of charm, and always prepared, he would be the first to crack a self-effacing joke about not missing something he's never had. Palmer reveals a man so utterly depleted of his humanity that he is titillated only by the question of whether he or his usurping sister Regina will ultimately cannibalize the other.

As the force Ben finds he can't control, Irene Crist Flanagan illuminates Regina's toughness and her impatience for proving her own avaricious mettle. At her strongest, in the play's final scene, Flanagan achieves a gravitas that is undeniable. Too often, however, the performance seems unpolished. Regina may be nouveau riche, but she's had a couple of generations to practice her skills. Skin-deep or otherwise, she has class. In what may be an attempt at a more naturalistic treatment of a role often approached with a surfeit of style, Flanagan's performance seems lackluster in emotion and in need of some fey artifice; cool in affect, it rarely catches fire. Although her smoldering rage may be judiciously measured out in smiles and droll sarcasm, Regina needs to be an incandescence of brilliant desperation.

Bennett Wood is fine as Regina's husband Horace, determined to throw a moral monkey-wrench into the siblings' schemes before his ailing heart gives out. Usually portrayed as an effete Southern gentleman, the character is Hellman's symbol of the era's fading morality and gentility. Wood's spunky interpretation is fresh -- this Horace is not going gently into his good night. Barclay Roberts makes Oscar, the most crass and least intelligent of the Hubbards, a man who not only goes shooting every morning to kill animals (which he then throws away) but who is, himself, dead behind the eyes. As his sad wife Birdie, whom he married only for her family's status -- and who dithers and drinks to obscure the barren reality of her life -- Jo Lynne Palmer does credit to a role that invites caricature. Erin Wade is quite moving as Horace and Regina's young daughter Alexandra.

Andre Bruce Ward's late-Victorian costumes are arresting, and the set design by Jim Seeman with set decoration by Bill Short suggests a fittingly gilded cage. The manipulative Hubbards value putting on a good show, not making human connection. They are good at artifice, not life. Regina's drawing room is not only period-correct, it appropriately reads more like a stage set than a home; a carefully dressed-up sterility emanates from the heavy brocades just as it does from the Hubbard kin.

Hellman gives each of the lead characters at least one big "aria" and director Chipman, who is also an actor, frames each of these very respectfully. His direction of the piece as a whole is clear, if seemingly prescriptive (at times the stage pictures are more vivid than the emotional text). If there is a tendency toward over-explicitness and staginess, it most certainly is also there in Hellman's play. The most involving dynamic in this production is Palmer's Ben, who oils his way across the stage like a cobra in a well-cut suit. He's this Foxes most in-the-moment, living presence; the performance crackles with inconspicuously deployed technique and a riveting threat of danger.