Reviews
Kerry Reid, Chicago Tribune
[Invasion!] blends the classic nesting-stories structure of "The Arabian Nights" with contemporary riffs on the psychic damages incurred through racial and ethnic profiling...a clever and sometimes-wrenching kaleidoscopic journey through the looking-glass of prejudice, fear and internalized self-loathing that ends with an indelible and horrifying erasure of identity. There is a whiff of "Alice in Wonderland" in Khemiri's world, too. Humpty-Dumpty's assertion that "When I choose a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less" gets a workout through repeated invocations and iterations of the name "Abulkasem," which takes on numerous shades of meaning. Abulkasem is whoever and whatever the characters choose it to mean — or choose to see in those who bear the name. [Invasion! is] a sly condemnation of monolingual culture and how easy it is to believe the worst of those who do not speak one's own native tongue...a multilayered assault on the inherent unworkability — not to mention immorality — of racial profiling.
Catey Sulivan, Chicago Theatre Beat
A blistering commentary on the dangerous power of stereotypes. Jonas Hussan Khemiri‘s Invasion! is a challenging kaleidoscope of a play, a whirling, non-linear mash-up of chameleonic characters, charged situations and provocative ideas. There’s a thru-line in this demanding piece, but it’s not always obvious as Khemiri’s torrent of heightened poetry and charged dialogue comes rushing at you. Directed by Anna C. Bahow and translated from the original Swedish by Madison linguist Rachel Willson-Broyles, Invasion! can be intensely challenging as it hopscotches through time, place and among characters to form a sort of verbal puzzle. In the end though, the big picture that gradually emerges from at times seemingly disconnected situations is vivid and essential. What Khemiri has crafted with Invasion! is a blistering commentary on the dangerous power of stereotypes and ignorance as well as a pointed declaration of the supercharged power of language to become a force of good or destruction. Throughout the piece, Khemiri toys with the audience’s perception of what is true and what is perception. Events unfold in a manner that seems clear, only to be upended when they’re presented from a different perspective. The effect is emotional whiplash – both devastating and comic. Invasion! is not an easy play. Indeed, it can seem maddeningly opaque. But it is well worth the frustration, and the ideas it presents will stay with you long after the lights come up.
Scott Morgan, Windy City Times
Silk Road Rising poster artist Andrew Skwish certainly created an apt illustration for the full-scale Chicago premiere of Jonas Hassen Khemiri's Obie Award-winning play Invasion! It's a Rubik's Cube featuring styled images of people who could be Arab, South Asian, Persian and more. Skwish's multi-peopled image also matches the writing style of Khemiri who offers up plenty of uncomfortable situations in Invasion! The stylistic diversity and ideas in Invasion! certainly prod a lot of thinking. It's like Khemiri is throwing all sorts of ideas and viewpoints things out there and is just leaving it up to audiences to decide what sticks or rings true. This makes Invasion! come off as a short-attention span jumble that is deliberately dizzying and will make you work to form the play coherent in your head. Silk Road Rising certainly deserves praise for tackling such a challenging work and performing it so well. Just be sure to leave your expectations for something linear at the door.
Francis Sadac, From the Ledge
A play like Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Invasion!, currently receiving a blistering Chicago premiere at Silk Road Rising, which focuses on how people use words to differentiate, segregate, define and re-define Arabs as the other is vital and critical. It is a provocative play that will make some people squirm in their seats, as they should!, but it is essential viewing. Khemiri, son of a Tunisian father and a Swedish mother and raised multi-racial in heterogeneously white Scandinavia, has very potent, cuts-close-to-the-bone things to say. Khemiri writes some pretty damn powerful scenes. It is powerful, breathtaking stuff. Khemiri blazingly drives home the point that it is our words, words we have control of, that we use to define and disenfranchise. [Invasion!] hooks us in, leading us to stare, riveted, at the ferocious, unsettling world Khemiri’s words have created.
Matt Miles, Fresh Roasted Films
Silk Road Rising’s production of Invasion! is a luridly poignant piece that is not only alarming and grappling, but the talent behind the work (both on stage and off) is engaging and deserves an audience. Unconventional in nature, Invasion! pushes the boundaries of discussion in a way that will engage audiences with unexpected turns. Director Anna Bahow has taken Rachel Willson-Broyles’ admirable translations (Swedish to English) of playful drama and transforms them into a disruptive staging that is curiously memorable. There are several moments that will simply surprise the viewer and keep everyone engaged because Bahow’s movement and flow have a wonderful proficiency about them. Set (Dan Stratton) & Lighting (Sarah Hughey) designs drop audiences in a colorful mosque setting that whispers the ever-present topical nature of Invasion!, while also adding some interactive set pieces to keep both the actors inventive in character blocking & audiences engaged in action and thought. Peter Storm’s smartly-tabbed sound design lands sequences, character & text influences for a underscoring reminiscent to that of a cinematic experience within the Silk Road’s intimate playing space. The spirited cast - Kamal Harris, Amira Sabbagh, Glenn Stanton, and Omer Abbas Salem - all take on their personal tracks with vigor and talented storytelling. As each Actor assumes their various caricatures within the ensemble structure of Invasion!, they bring endearing and heartfelt connections to each role and show they are smart in their depictions.
Ruth Smerling, Theatre World Internet Magazine
Jonas Hassen Khemini’s Invasion! is a humorous but brutally in-your-face candid discourse on Arab identity in the world. Invasion! raucously cushions it’s slings and arrows spoofing American TV, borrowing format and content from shows like Friends and Saturday Night Live. The four person ensemble of Kamal Hans, Amira Sabbagh, Glenn Stanton and Omer Abbas Salem are merciless as they poke fun at the images of typical Arabs in America by sharing the concept of Abulkasem, the icon of bad behavior, a terrorist who put fear in the hearts of everyone around him. For everyone who has a hard time communicating, a fear of foreigners, or just needs a good laugh, Invasion! delivers from a depth of perspective rarely explored in the United States. Invasion!, with its stunning cast of original artists, is a must see.
Zach Freeman, Newcity
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.
Katy Walsh, The Fourth Walsh
Within the first ten minutes, this show establishes itself as unconventional… startlingly so. Playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri used multiple mediums to convey discrimination against Arab men. Although the subject matter is serious, the tone isn't always. Director Anna Bahow introduces the variety show-like segments with tight pacing. Her staging of the unconventional introduction is unforgettably impressive. The talented and animated cast, Kamal Harris, Amira Sabbagh, Glenn Stanton, and Omer Abbas Salem, evolve effectively into multiple roles. Within Khemiri’s ambitious spectrum, the cast embrace a variety of distinct personas. If I had to sum up this play in one word, I’d say ‘Abulkasem.’
Tom Williams, Chicago Critic
Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Invasion! (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles) is a mixture of theatre. performance art, part agit-prop, and part polemic. Khemiri uses wordplay about the term Abulkasem. The clever wordplay here demonstrates how the semantics of Middle Eastern -Muslim types can lead us Westerners , particularly Americans, to fear them. The action here is torrid and, at times, a tad confusing but ultimately Invasion! delivers a theatrical treat. The piece proves to be provocative, daring and insightful. This show is worthy of an audience.
Larry Bommer, Stage and Cinema
Supple, swift and slippery, this 80-minute, four-character satire skewers Islamophobia and its many mutations. Its trick is to center our self-terrorism on an exotic name borrowed from an old play. Meaning everything and nothing, the fake persona “Abulkasem” takes on as many protean forms as Woody Allen’s elusive but ubiquitous Zelig. As malleable as the material, Anna Bahow’s subversive staging for Silk Road Rising keeps it surreal—and toxically familiar. The cast—Kamal Hans, Amira Sabbagh, Glenn Stanton, and Omer Abbas Salem—inhabit their careful caricatures with heart, charm and zest.
Kris Vire, TimeOut Chicago
The refractory Invasion! is a meditation on the powers of language and skin color...Khemiri also plays with the idea of an Arab-sounding name—Abulkasem—taking on a life of its own as it's transmuted from one speaker to another like a game of Telephone, eventually becoming the moniker of a terrorist who may or may not really exist.
Amy Munice, Splash Magazines
Obie-award winning Invasion! is a powerful and timely exposé of ethnic and racial profiling, and of that well-worn path of shortcuts in thinking that fall under the rubric of stereotype. For those of us who seek out small Chicago theater to spark thoughts in new directions, Silk Road Rising’s Invasion! delivers this with perfect comic timing and a flawless performance. We laugh frequently and hard such that the underlying tragedy in this story accumulates below our in-the-moment radar…[The name] “Abulkasem” serves as a poetic ribbon that aptly ties it all together. In the most able hands of playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri, translator Rachel Willson-Broyles and director Anna Bahow, you will dwell in this zone for 80 uninterrupted minutes where farce meets tragedy in the deconstruction, sometimes quite literal, of the West’s stereotype of the Arab man. Playwright Kemiri does make searing political commentary but with a fast-paced alteration between tragic and comic moments that above all keeps you engaged. No small part of Invasion!’s ability to engage comes from its stellar cast –understudy Omer Abbas Salem, Kamal Hans, Glenn Stanton, and Amira Sabbagh. These four actors play numerous roles and handle quick conversions from one persona to another seamlessly. Go see Invasion! with your most thoughtful friends who will help you savor deconstructing the deconstruction.
Silk Road Rising’s Artistic Ambassador David Henry Hwang called Invasion! “one of the most effective coups de théâtre I’ve ever seen.”
"A slyly entertaining comedy with a sharp political edge...expresses confusion with remarkable clarity." - The New York Times
"If you’ve ever wished somebody would write a razor-sharp play anatomizing lazy paranoia about the Middle East―somebody has." - The Village Voice
“One of the best social commentaries in dramatic form of the past few years." - CurtainUp
"Playfulness and seriousness intermingle to disturbing - and awfully satisfying - effect." - Theater Mania
Praise for Jonas Hassen Khemiri and Invasion!
"A slyly entertaining comedy with a sharp political edge...expresses confusion with remarkable clarity." - The New York Times
"If you’ve ever wished somebody would write a razor-sharp play anatomizing lazy paranoia about the Middle East―somebody has." - The Village Voice
“One of the best social commentaries in dramatic form of the past few years." - CurtainUp
"Playfulness and seriousness intermingle to disturbing - and awfully satisfying - effect." - Theater Mania