Ann-Marie Duff in The Little Foxes [Johan Persson]

SET in Alabama, Lillian Hellman’s 1939 classic The Little Foxes is a tale of greed and ambition.

Regina (Anne-Marie Duff) dreams of escaping a stultifying life with her sick husband Horace (John Light) and moving to Chicago.

When a businessman, Mr Marshall (Light), offers Horace and her brothers Benjamin (Mark Bonnar) and Oscar (Steffan Rhodri) the opportunity to invest in a cotton mill she jumps at the chance to realise her ambitions and outdo them at the same time.

After the death of their father, the brothers had shared the family fortune between them. Oscar and Benjamin are happy to join forces on the mill but they need Horace’s funds.

They hope Regina will persuade Horace, who is away from home convalescing, to invest in the project. She attempts to manipulate the situation in order to get a bigger share.

Marriage and wealth are irretrievably entwined in The Little Foxes. We learn that Oscar only married Birdie (Anna Madeley), his browbeaten, aristocratic wife, in order to acquire her family’s cotton plantation.

He suggests marriage between his son Leo (Stanley Morgan) and Regina’s daughter Alexandra (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) as a means to secure the deal.

When Horace refuses to release the money, Oscar persuades Leo, a bank teller, to steal the railroad bonds he has stored in a deposit box at his bank.

The three siblings’ ruthlessness is performed with relish, and we are left guessing as to who will come out on top.

Rather inexplicably, director Lyndsey Turner and designer Lizzie Clachan move the action from 1900 to the late 1950s, but retain the mentions of horse and carriage. This, and the abrupt ending, give a slightly disjointed feel to an otherwise compelling drama.

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