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Character Descriptions for “The Little Foxes”
Addie: She is the Hubbard’s black maid and Alexandra Hubbard’s nanny; she has a keen sense of justice and she tries to protect Alexandra from the rapacity of the Hubbard family. She considers Ben, Oscar, Regina, and Leo a scourge on humanity, “eaters of the earth,” and she scorns those who are too feeble or too uncommitted to stand up to them, saying: “Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it. . . . Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. . . . Sometimes I think it ain’t right to stand and watch them do it.” She herself lacks the social status to fight them effectively. Her comments serve as a moral compass for the audience. Stage age 30—60s.
Cal: He is a slightly bumbling and mild-mannered black servant who very indirectly protests Oscar’s monopolization of the area’s hunting rights by offhandedly mentioning how his friends would “give anything for a little piece of that meat.” Stage age 10s—60s (easily adaptable to any age, I could see him as a child or an older man).
(Please note: These two characters are small but essential well-written roles in this play and to the story. They would have formerly been slaves, who have been granted “freedom” as a result of the Civil War—but “freedom” is a relative term. Yes, they are no longer “owned”, but they work hard for a dismally unsustainable salary, which leaves them unable to properly provide their families and no means of escape to a better life. They are important to the story in many ways, supply important social commentary of the period setting, and carry pivotal plot points. They are small enough roles, however, that the same actor could play a servant in both plays if they were interested—even changing them to be the same person twenty years apart, which could be very interesting to see how their demeanor and stature change. I want to show them very differently than the 1940s movie version—which certainly illustrates Hollywood’s stereotypical depictions of blacks in film at that time. These are people of incredible strength and dignity. They lack formal education because it was not allowed for them, but they are not ignorant. They are very aware, perhaps unfortunately too aware, that the people they must work for are making their fortunes off the pain and strife of their people.)
Regina Giddens: Born Regina Hubbard, handsome sister to Ben and Oscar, wife to Horace, and mother of Zan, she is the central character in The Little Foxes. Portrayed on stage by Tallulah Bankhead and in film by Bette Davis, she is a creature of seductive talents and evil agendas. She is sexually cold, having scornfully banned her husband from her bed for the last ten years. Money and power are her only loves, and she resorts to an unusual method of revenge against her husband, who attempts to keep her from attaining the wealth of which she has always dreamt. As her evil plan is drawing to a close, she coolly savors a familiar game of blackmail, fencing with her brothers for the stakes of the ultimate control of the family power. Stage age @ 40.
Alexandra Giddens: Seventeen-year-old “Zan” adores her father Horace Giddens and her Aunt Birdie but mistrusts and, by the end of the play, actively dislikes her mother, Regina. Addie has protected Zan from her family, allowing youthful idealism to carry Zan along, but Horace wants her to “learn to hate and fear” the Hubbard way of life so that she will get away from them. She grows up suddenly following the plays climax, but it remains unclear in what way she will fulfill her promise to “be fighting . . . some place where people don’t just stand around and watch.” Stage age 17.
Horace Giddens: Regina’s husband is a man of moral conviction who lacks the physical and emotional fortitude to honor his conviction by fighting the Hubbards. Instead this man who has made his own small fortune in banking takes refuge in a Baltimore hospital, nursing a heart ailment and “thinking about” about his unhappy life with Regina. Zan fetches him home at Regina’s request, but there is a motive in her actions of which he is unaware. In his final showdown, wherein he shows some mettle in his elaborate scheme to obstruct Regina’s access to his money, Regina strips away that last shred of his defenses in a moment of unparalleled drama. He spends much of the show in a wheelchair. Stage age 40s—60.
Benjamin Hubbard: the eldest brother to Regina and Oscar, is the soft-spoken but callous ringleader of the Hubbard family and one of the predatory capitalists of the New South. Unmarried, he shows no interest in human relations beyond the use he makes of them to achieve financial domination of the “small unnamed town in the south” where he was born. He has built his local empire by cheating and overcharging black customers in his dry goods store and he can guarantee Chicago investor Mr. Marshall low wages and no strikes in their new cotton mill because he knows how to play his workers against each other. Ben vies for power with the cool precision of a chess player who holds a grudging respect for his primary opponent, Regina. Stage age late 50s—early 60s.
Oscar Hubbard: The sharp-tempered, mean-spirited brother of Regina and Ben who kowtows to his older and more powerful brother, bullies his wife Birdie, and goes hunting daily, only to throw out the precious game he kills, ignoring Cal’s hints to share it. He is clever enough to develop a scheme to steal Horace’s money but he slavishly hands it over to Ben without realizing that Ben will not let himself be implicated. Although he presumably wants to make millions for his son’s sake, he and Ben let Leo take the blame when the theft is discovered. He treats his cultivated wife, Birdie, with disdain, having married her solely to help Ben take over her family’s cotton plantation. He advises his son: “It’s every man’s duty to think of himself.” Stage age late 40s—early 50s.
Birdie Hubbard: She is a timid, well-bred, but aging Southern belle, a nervous and flighty woman abused and completely dominated by her bullying husband Oscar. She once innocently enjoyed coming-out parties at her parents’ plantation, Lionnet, but now she has not had a day of happiness in twenty-two years. A weak woman, she has not prevented her son from becoming even worse than his father, and she drowns her misery in a “secret” drinking habit that the family cloaks under the euphemism of “her headaches.” Her only salvation is music and her relationship with her niece Zan, who, she hopes, will avoid her fate. Stage age @ 40.
Leo Hubbard: The son of Birdie and Oscar Hubbard, a lying toady with all of the greed and deceitfulness of his father and none of his mother’s cultural refinement, but having “a weak kind of good looks.” His own mother detests him. He foolishly reveals to his father that he has taken an illicit look into his uncle Horace’s safe deposit box and tries to blame it on others, but his intimate knowledge of the box’s contents and the whereabouts of the keys give away his culpability. Ben can barely conceal his contempt for Leo and makes him take the full blame for the theft when it is discovered. Leo is apparently too stupid to save himself. Stage age early 20s.
William Marshall: A powerful, refined Chicago businessman, he wants to invest in the industrialization of the New South by building a cotton mill but needs local partners to manage the mill and keep the workers in hand. Although married, he flirts openly with Regina during the one scene in which he appears, while she uses every seductive trick in the book to lure him into the business deal—while also securing her a “step-up” into the world of high society she so wishes to enter. Stage age 40s—60s.
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