Horace is away so the brothers are negotiating with their sister Regina.  Oscar’s kinder wife Birdie (Anna Madeley) is present at this family gathering.  She is from a considerably richer plantation family and was married by Oscar in a land deal to benefit the Hubbards. Birdie is in an abusive marriage and Oscar is violent and nasty to her.

The role of Regina is one which has been played onstage by Tallulah Bankhead, Elizabeth Taylor and Stockard Channing and on film, by Bette Davis. Bankhead and Davis played her with unremitting evil and Lillian Hellman preferred her play not to be considered a melodrama.  Anne-Marie Duff’s handling of the part is to be selfish and greedy. We don’t believe that she is acting on behalf of her daughter Alexandra.  Her misdeeds stretch from opportunism to something much darker and her performance is always believable.  Lizzie Clachan has Regina always dressed in devilish red whereas the other women are in pale pink, orange florals.

There is good contrast between Anna Madeley’s Bridie who is decent and caring towards Alexandra.  There is a good/bad divide in the characters between Birdie, Alexandra and Horace, and the rest apart from the servants.  The two servants Addie (Andrea Davy) and Cal (Freddie MacBruce) fall into the decent human beings with their loyalty to the family. I didn’t realise until I read the cast sheet that John Light had also played the industrialist William Marshall.