August 9, 2013
By Zach Freeman
An ever-shifting piece of all-engaging theater, [Invasion!] asks its audience to stay on their toes and take nothing for granted. Loosely tied together by one ephemeral word (“Abulkasem”), Khemiri’s script seeks to examine how a simple word can effortlessly manifest itself into any number of meanings merely by passing through the filter of various psyches.
During the course of this eighty-minute ensemble production, Abulkasem goes from a name in a stilted period drama to an adjective used by high-school students to describe almost anything (good or bad) to the name of a shadowy figure authorities are constantly hunting. “Maybe Abulkasem is me,” one ensemble member says at one point, before turning the concept onto the audience, “Maybe Abulkasem is you.”
In the same way that Invasion! can be uniquely understood by each audience member based on their own experiences, Abulkasem is up for interpretation. Try as you might, you can’t nail Abulkasem down and the dialogue snaps and scenes change to keep you from nailing the show down either. It’s a suggestive concept and set designer Don Stratton’s multipurpose set pieces work well in this environment, moving, turning and even splitting apart to maintain the transitory feeling the show invokes. [In Invasion!] the nature of psychological filters and what we choose to believe becomes readily apparent.