Another Part of the Forest

Dan Wackerman's Peccadillo Theater Company offers a competent revival of Lillian Hellman’s 1946 family melodrama, a prequel to her more famous The Little Foxes (which will be revived this fall at New York Theatre Workshop). Sherman Howard plays a rich self-made tyrant in 1880 Alabama, who must fend off the schemes of his duplicitous children. Hellman’s script is full of vivid ideas but is also oddly potbellied, with a slow first act, a dynamic second and a lower-wattage third that is one long twist of the filial screw.—Adam Feldman