Lillian Hellman's drama, a prequel to her earlier "The Little Foxes," travels back two decades to the 1880s to trace the ruthless rise of the young Hubbard family under the iron rule of patriarch Marcus Hubbard, whose fortune, built on wartime profiteering during the Civil War, has bought the family wealth but not the social respectability he craves in the defeated, resentful postwar South. As Marcus's grown children, including the calculating young Regina and her scheming brothers Ben and Oscar, chafe under his controlling grip and begin maneuvering against both their father and one another, long-buried secrets about how the family fortune was actually made threaten to surface with devastating consequences. Hellman traces the origins of the moral corruption and familial betrayal that would define the Hubbards a generation later, showing how ambition, greed, and the willingness to exploit even one's own blood took root well before the events of "The Little Foxes." Marcus's own tyranny ultimately sets the stage for his downfall, as his children learn his ruthless lessons only too well and turn them against him. The play offers a darkly compelling origin story for one of American drama's most notorious families, deepening the tragedy of their later, more famous betrayals.

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