Reviews for Filigree Theatre Performances
Review: Summer and Smoke by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 03, 2025
Filigree Theatre director Elizabeth V. Newman and cast render Tennessee Williams's meditation on fragility, virtue, and the heart both vividly and subtly. Stifled passion, remarkable characters; stirring and disturbing even now, 76 years after its debut.
Matters of the physical heart and the emotional heart—Tennessee Williams conflates them and then parses them out on the way to his love song to humanity, Summer and Smoke. Welcome to the first offering in Filigree Theatre’s seventh season. Like last year’s Suddenly Last Summer, director Elizabeth V. Newman and Filigree Theatre Tennessee Williams with great respect and crystalline clarity. Anyone who has seen or read even one of Wiliams’ plays knows that Summer and …
Review: The illusionary Games of Edward Rye by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 29, 2025
The world of stage magic and murky hypnotic manipulation raises questions in the psychological thriller with action-adventure overtones.
The Illusionary Games of Edward Rye, a world premiere authored by Ashley Griffin offers a brainy riff on illusionism, mesmerism, mentalism, magic, agnosticism, faith, free will, determinism, card tricks, math tricks, therapy, trust, ethics, and plush toy tigers. That's a lot to chew on. It's clear that Griffin researched these topics. The lead character is Edward Rye, played by Malcolm Stephenson, not a neurosurgeon or alien abduction hypno-researcher, but a slightly down-at-heel stage illusionist. Rye's …
Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation), by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 13, 2025
A thrilling, disturbing take on the classic tale -- delivered by a superb cast willing to split themselves just as violently as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“From tongue to tail,” the key line in Filigree Theatre’s new production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, is the acute metaphoric descriptor of the language art and sensual themes of this exquisite stage production. Role reversal and its twin, plot twist, reside in the very premise of Stevenson’s story and Hatcher’s stage version. It's a tale of doppelgangers meeting and splitting the atom upon stepping through the looking glass and shaking hands. …
Review: Suddenly Last Summer by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 07, 2024
Huge talent and commitment to Tennessee Williams's unrelenting plot and imagery make Filigree Theatre's SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER a vital, unmissable production
Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer pries open the boiler door to reveal the flames of 1930s passion, mores, and the corruption of the thoroughly guilt-ridden ultra-wealthy in Great Depression New Orleans. The play isn't as well-known as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or A Streetcar Named Desire, but in the hands of Elizabeth V. Newman and her excellent cast at Factory on Fifth in downtown east Austin, this weighty piece from the Willliams canon …
Review: ABOVE THE FOLD by Julie Zaffarano, Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 20, 2024
Far from film depictions of 1930's journalism, ABOVE THE FOLD shows a canny woman reporter confronting the hard-bitten boy's club of scandal reporting. A lurid puzzle, vivid characters, and a striking set raise the stakes.
Imagine a distorted thrust stage, visibly twisted back to the 1930s by the powerful flow of time. The playing space established on the concrete-floored quonset hut of Factory on Fifth is a very large rectangle. Two sides are the upstage portion, the long dimension established with a long, ornate hotel bar. The shorter side offers an exit door set in a floral-design wallpapered wall and, to the downstage end, an elevated area with 1930s-period couch, …
Review: PHOTOGRAPH 51 by Anna Ziegler, by Filigree Theatre, Austin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 05, 2024
Superlative writing makes DNA discovery accessible; Anna Ziegler's script and Elizabeth V. Newman's direction provide the competition, misgivings, and misogyny behind that Nobel Prize.
Anna Ziegler’s play Photograph 51 could exhaust a reviewer’s list of cliché superlatives. And such hacking would show disrespect to an impressive work of art premiering in Austin. Photograph 51 relates the scientific story of the discovery of the role of DNA in the genetics of life. Science-based plays have exceptional challenges explaining scientific principles and activities to non-scientific audiences. The writer must exercise great care in order not to lose the average theatregoer. Anna …