The name “Abulkasem” may not mean anything to you now, but it will mean much after you’ve seen “Invasion!”
Maybe too much, because this satirical Swedish import packs a whole lot of ideas — from scintillating to sophomoric — into its 80-minute running time.
In Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s twisty intellectual exercise, Abulkasem is the name of several characters, including an international terrorist, an avant-garde theater director and a Lebanese exterminator.
An Indian telemarketer uses it to pick up a gorgeous American woman at a bar, and for a group of teenagers, it’s a slang word with seemingly endless permutations.
The freewheeling plot is nearly impossible to describe. Four talented performers — Francis Benhamou, Andrew Guilarte, Bobby Moreno and Debargo Sanyal — play multiple characters in a series of tenuously linked scenes riffing on themes ranging from the malleability of language to cultural and racial divides.
Among the funniest is one in which an Arabic apple picker recites ABBA lyrics that a female interpreter relates as ominous threats.
“Waterloo — Promise to love me forever more?” he says, only to have her translate that as “I recorded a farewell film in which I praised the Prophet Mohammed.”
Under Erica Schmidt’s fast-paced direction, some segments work far better than others; a monologue in which a young man describes a horrifying scene he witnesses while on a trip to the country feels jarringly out of place.
But there’s no denying the playwright’s devilish imagination. His “Invasion!” — whose American premiere this is, courtesy of the Play Company — may not always succeed, but it does conquer.