When Elizabeth Taylor made her UK stage debut in a widely savaged production of The Little Foxes in 1982, more than one reviewer likened Lillian Hellman's melodrama to Dallas, the TV soap opera. Substitute deep south cotton farmers for Texas oilmen and you can see what they meant. First staged in 1939 with Tallulah Bankhead in the lead, and later filmed with Bette Davis, the play paints an unflattering portrait of three wealthy siblings whose scheme to extract extra profit from their land turns in on itself with enough plot twists to satisfy any fan of JR.
For the moralistic Hellman, the play stood as a damning vision of capitalism, but she got far too entwined in the machinations of the greedy family to allow much room for politics. We might disapprove of Regina and her brothers Ben and Oscar Hubbard as they boast about how little they pay their black employees, and how much they will gain from building a cotton mill, but we are also captivated by their wicked ways. As a lone voice of righteousness, Regina's husband, the terminally ill Horace Giddens, contributes more to the double-crossing plot than to any ethical debate once he realises the brothers have stolen his money for their exploitative scheme.
Although the allusions to Dallas weren't meant kindly, Ian Grieve's Perth production could actually do with something of the old soap's swagger. In pitching it almost unintelligibly fast, he successfully smoothes over the creaky aspects of the play, but strips it of the poise and decorum its well-to-do southern setting demands. Short of their usual stature - not least because they are dwarfed by Rebecca Minto's badly proportioned set - Grieve's experienced cast downplay the status of the ruthless characters. It isn't only the wobbly accents that deny the play its humid authenticity.
Irene MacDougall is typically assured as Regina, playing her less as a monster than a damaged woman living on her wits in a world of male power. Psychologically convincing though her approach is, it is not enough to make us care for Regina's fate once Hellman's pot-boiler of a plot has run its course.
· Until February 17. Box office: 0845 612 6332.
