Review #1 of 2: All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson

 

Filigree Theatre and Arthur Miller are an unbeatable combination. Filigree has opened Miller’s All My Sons at Ground Floor Theatre in east Austin. Filigree is known for precision in its productions, and Miller’s plays are canonical modernist plays of the mid-twentieth century. His plays portray the values, discontents, and tragedies of American life at the time, and, n the case of All My Sons, the immediate post-World-War-II era.

 

Filigree Theatre presents it all to perfection. All My Sons shines in the hands of director Elizabeth V. Newman.

 

Miller wrote the play in 1946, and it premiered on Broadway early in 1947 (thanks, Wikipedia!). At that time, the wounds of World War II were still open and bleeding. Miller had begun writing the pay inn 1941 in response to newspaper stories about industrial racketeering that had mortal consequences for servicemen overseas. The main character, Joe Keller (J. Kevin Smith), is a businessman with government contracts. At the same time, he hads a son, a pilot, who wasreported missing three years previously in a mission over China. Keller’s wife Kate (Tonie Knight) won’t allow anyone to say that her son Larry was lost. She believes firmly that God wouldn’t allow her son Larry to die, had told her so, and Larry would return. Everyone else tries to talk sense to her, but she won't hear of it. 

 

Old wounds reopen when Ann Deever, the daughter of Joe Keller’s senior employee (Lauren Ellie MacLeod) is brought to the house for Chris Keller (James Caleb Lindsley) to propose of marriage. She'd formerly been “Larry’s girl” in the words of Mama Kate Keller. Ann's father is serving a prison sentence for delivering  to the Army Air Corps defective engine parts that made aircraft crash. The death count rose to 21 pilots before the scandal hit the headlines. Joe Keller denied that he was to blame; Deever went to prison. Later, Deever’s son, George (Jon Edward Cook) comes to the house with new information and the demand that his sister lfuse to marry Chris Keller and leave instead.

 

The dramatic tension rises to unbelievable heights. The truth outs on the issue of the defective equipment as well as  the circumstances of Larry Keller's disappearance in the Pacific. The truth devastates the lives of every character in the play. whichdescends quickly to its ultimate tragedy. There is no happy ending here, and there were strong similarities to Greek tragedy. Unlike Greek tragedy, however, All My Sons addresseds additional themes —consequential ethical lapses for the sake of the family, wartime greed leading to mortal abuses, the meaning of sons, the meaning of fathers, the mentally obscuring effects of strong faith, and the mentally and emotionally obscuring effects of romantic love. 

 

A strong, well selected cast enacted the play that ran about 2 ½ hours. Dramatic powerhouses all, the cast metaphorically gnawed the furniture, the front porch, and, obviously, the highly symbolic broken tree in the side yard. Playing the senior Kellers, J. Kevin Smith and Tonie Knight  created and rode tidal waves of emotion that ultimately swept them away. The same can be said for James Caleb Lindsley and Lauren Ellie MacLeod and Jon Edward Cook in their respective branches of the action. Mike Ooi and Bethany Harbaugh as Dr. and Mrs. Bayliss told their own stories with relieving humor and sometimes more than a touch of malice. Mike Ooi was also credited for “Fight Choreo,” but apart from two moderate shoves and one poorly executed stage slap, there was no onstage physical violence. Supporting actors Javier Aranda, Audria Choudhury, and Teddy Coltman-Oliver gave color and dimension to the neighborhood of friends.

 

 

Jon Edward Cook as George Deever played a strongly limned pivotal role. Deever came into the Keller household to undo the conventional marital plans and take away his sister. He arrived conveying an atmosphere of threat that never left him. It takes a powerful and bold actor to portray a character opposing a neighborhood of characters who’ve known him from childhood. To their faces he told the story of his imprisoned father, and Cook did so with apparent ease. Director Newman cloaked his character with nuance, as when Kate Keller, who had known and loved George since his birth, ordered him to sit, drink juice, and reminisce. Without setting aside his anger, George obeyed, observing the courtesy and respect due the neighborhood’s middle class American values. Despite arriving in his old haunts amid inner and outer turmoil, Deever showed lingering childlike wonder, observing the growth of the trees in the years since he left. Jon Cook in the character of George Deever added enlivening layers to the story. Kudos.

 

One cannot end a review of this production of All My Sons without paying credit to the set and lighting. The set was the front porch and two sides of the modest middle-class home of the Kellers in small town America. Flower boxes lined the porch railings. An iron ornamental table and chairs sat downstage center on a grassy lawn of astroturf. A section of a large tree, broken in the previous night’s storm, symbolic of the broken family, stood partially in the side yard, stage right. The production’s initial and final lighting sets were the same--gobo-assisted sunlight filtering through gnarly branches, their shadows snaking over the walls and front porch. Exquisite imagery. Patrick Anthony receives credit for the scenic and lighting design, and technical director Beau Harris built the impressive set.

 

All My Sons can be appreciated by all adults with even the slightest interest in theatre. The play’s treatment by Filigree Theatre at Ground Floor Theatre gives an especially clear and satisfying illumination of the play. Highly recommended.

 

All My Sons by Arthur Miller runs from October 30 to November 14, 2026, at Ground Floor Theatre. 

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XTRA

Click to view Filigree Theatre's program for ALL MY SONS

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All My Sons
by Arthur Miller
Filigree Theatre

October 30 - November 14, 2026

WEEKEND 1:  Friday Oct - Sun Nov 1
WEEKEND 2:  Thurs Nov 5 - Sun Nov 8
WEEKEND 3: Thurs Nov 12 - SAT Nov 14

GROUND FLOOR THEATRE 979 Springdale Rd #122, Austin, TX 78702