August 4, 2013
By Tom Williams
Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Invasion! (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles) is a mixture of theatre. performance art, part agit-prop, and part polemic. It uses four players: Kamal Hans, Glenn Stanton, Amira Sabbagh and Omer Abbas Salem. They move from character sketches to the story of a fictitious terrorist to street thugs to middle class studs trying to pick up a girl in a club. All is done in 80 manic minutes ofsometime confusing mayhem designed to engage us as it delivers a biting satirical take on the nature of profiling and racial stereotypes.
Khemiri uses wordplay about the term Abulkasem. It means a beloved quirky Lebanese uncle to a term used as an adverb, noun, verb that has multiple meanings including a term for an Arab terrorist. The clever wordplay here demonstrates how the semantics of Middle Eastern -Muslimtypes can lead to 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. We see through humor and painful sketches how the world now seeAbulkasem-affected folks in the contemporary world after 911. The piece proves to be provocative, daring and insightful. The cast especially works hard delivering a large assortment of characters, styles, accents and persona. The show ends with a loge monologue that demonstrates the pain of being a member of an ethnic group being held as suspicious. Ultimately our fears of the Arab male comes through loud and clear. This show is worthy of an audience.
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