Invictus Theatre Archives - Chicago Reader

Democracy under siege

by Albert Williams October 27, 2022October 27, 2022

Invictus Theatre Company delivers a solid, sometimes stirring, and strikingly relevant rendition of William Shakespeare’s 1599 tragedy. It’s the story of Marcus Brutus (played by Invictus artistic director Charles Askenaizer, who also directed), a well-intentioned aristocrat in the waning days of the ancient Roman Republic, who joins a plot by his fellow senators to assassinate […]

The cast of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Invictus Theatre, shot slightly from above. Honey is in a green sweater, dancing with a smile on her face, at left. George is standing behind the sofa, arms crossed, wearing a yellow cardigan. Nick is seated on the sofa in a gray suit, looking glum, while Martha, in a low-cut red blouse, sits next to him laughing

Theater Review

Living room absurdism

by Albert Williams May 17, 2022May 17, 2022

It may be difficult to comprehend today just how shocking Edward Albee’s drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was when it premiered in October 1962, the same week that the Cuban missile crisis began. While the atomic fireworks the world feared never happened, Albee’s three-act, three-hour-plus masterpiece detonated an explosion that rocked American culture to […]

A soldier in tan camouflage and a red beret stands behind a woman in an African dress, holding her arms. Another soldier seated on the right grabs her face.

Theater Review

‘They’re safer with me than at home’

by Amanda Finn February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined can be hard to watch at times. Set in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Nottage’s Mama Nadi (Tekeisha Yelton-Hunter) runs a pool hall where the women don’t just serve beer. Mama Nadi’s brothel is a place of refuge for the men on either side of the civil war […]

Theater Review

Hamlet for Halloween

by Albert Williams October 27, 2021October 27, 2021

Invictus Theatre’s intimate, bare-bones modern-dress staging of Hamlet is storefront Shakespeare at its best. The company’s stated aim is to “promote a better understanding . . . of heightened language . . . to express the breadth of the human condition,” and this dynamic, clearly spoken non-Equity production delivers. Director Charles Askenaizer guides the ensemble […]