Reviews for Filigree Theatre Performances
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 …
Review: Antigone (David Rush) by Filigree Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 26, 2023
In Filigree Theatre's accomplished staging, the adversity and mutual destruction of Antigone and dictator Creon are entirely human. The gods are silent. As they are in our own day.
The choices are stark and the interests are opposed. As they were then, are now, and ever will be. Playwright/adapter David Rush thoroughly scrubs Sophocles's Antigone, like a museum curator carefully restoring a find from an archeological dig, rendering it from an odd antiquity into a darkly glowing relevant contemporary challenge. Director Elizabeth V. Newman, her cast, and the design team embraced the ritual nature of Greek drama with an almost liturgical staging. …
Review #2 of 2: FIRE IN DREAMLAND by Filigree Theatre
by Justin M. West
Published on February 08, 2023
A trio of subtly brilliant performances offers satisfying contrast to FIRE IN DREAMLAND's surreal storytelling and aethereal set design. This production sits with you. For days afterward.
The venue looked vaguely like an aircraft carrier on the inside, with a marked but not unpleasant chill in the air. Hot cocoa and tea on offer and heaters strategically placed about the space kept us comfortable. A subtle suggestion via email before the show to bundle up didn’t hurt, either. Decidedly aircraft-free, Factory on Fifth is home to Filigree Theatre’s Fire in Dreamland, which began its two-week run last Thursday. The acquired taste …
Review #1 of 2: FIRE IN DREAMLAND by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 05, 2023
These characters live in their heads, in dreamland, but to their peril. Director Elizabeth V. Newman and the cast achieve storytelling rich in nuance of expression, posture, and body language.
Filigree Theatre’s production of Fire in Dreamland by Rinne Groff is in production now at the alternative space of Factory on Fifth, in keeping with Filigree Theatre’s aesthetic of producing high-quality plays almost by hand work. Factory on Fifth, one in a row of Quonset huts from the end of World War II purposed and repurposed for generations since, seems a perfect fit for Filigree Theatre. There was a certain kind of contemporary …