Kaylah Marie Crosby, Sierra Coachman, Aysia Slade, Britt Edwards, and Sandra Adjoumani Photo by Aaron Reese Boseman Photography

The events unfold in 1813, just as New Orleans is about to formally pass from French control into U.S. hands. For Beartrice Albans and the women of her household, the political shift is poised to have deeply personal consequences, as Lazare, the white man with whom Beartrice has produced three daughters, has just died. As Lazare's placée (his "rightful" mistress under the French plaçage system), Beartrice is on the brink of realizing her long-standing dream of formally inheriting the house.

The anticipated inheritance has consequences for virtually everyone under Beartrice's roof. From the matriarch's perspective, securing the house will save her daughters from becoming property (in fact if not in name) via the plaçage system. For Makeda, the enslaved woman who has served Beartrice for decades and helped to raise her daughters, Beartrice inheriting the house will at last win her long-promised freedom.

But Beartrice's eldest daughter, Agnès, both by virtue of being a young woman eager to establish her own identity and apparently having internalized the misogynoir that surrounds her, is eager to attend the masked ball where mothers broker with white men to "place" their daughters as mistresses. Moreover, the shifting political winds snatch Beartrice's inheritance, including Makeda, out from under her. Even as Agnès enlists her sister Odette in her plot to attend the masked ball, Beartrice prepares to offer her own body to Lazare's widow to secure the house.

Gardley's text, for all its power and interest, may follow a few too many threads. For example, one of the first characters we meet is Madame La Veuve, who arrives to dramatically (and suspiciously) mourn Lazare, even as she robs the corpse blind. She pumps Makeda for information about the goings on in the house, paying her in coins as well as gold jewelry, and we later learn that she and Beartrice had once been dear friends, though in the present, they are bitter enemies as the result of a conflict over Beartrice's first (and mysteriously deceased) lover. Although the character has an important function for the plot, and the theme of multi-generational cycles of exploitation and abuse is an important one, the character ultimately feels rather extraneous.

Similarly, well into the play, we learn that Beartrice's "mad" sister, Marie Josephine, was driven mad by the death of her lover, a Black man she chose, rather than following the "sensible" path of of connecting herself to whiteness. This story certainly prompts some of the most beautiful and powerful language in the play, but the character is somewhat awkwardly integrated into its fabric. On a related note, Marie's choices in the play's rather busy climactic moments inspire the actions of Beartrice's third daughter, Maude Lynn, whose character and motivations are fairly underdeveloped.

But the play, taken as a whole, is a funny, dark, soul-stirring look at a little-known historical moment that plays out as so many others do, shattering the security and lives of the "model" marginalized. And as usual, the production that Invictus offers is remarkable.

Kevin Rolfs (scenic designer) traps the women of the Albans family within a house whose destruction is already in progress. The set has three levels, representing the dining room and parlor where Lazare is laid out upstage center throughout the entire show, a bedroom raised well above ground level upstage left, and Marie's attic room spanning the width of the dining room another level above that. Within these confines, Rolfs manages to convey the claustrophobia born of six women occupying the space with their individual traumas and struggles swirling around them, and yet manifest within it is a slightly faded elegance and respectability that makes Beartrice's ambitions to hold on to it and shelter her children there understandable.

These themes are echoed beautifully in Terrie Devine's impeccable costume design. Devine's work, along with the wig, hair, and makeup design by Reuben Echoles, also demonstrates deep engagement with the play itself, as the visuals these two create tell their own stories that deepen some of the characters that the text occasionally neglects, and brings to life long-standing relationships among these women.

Levi J. Wilkins' lighting design works well with the set to impart a nervous tension throughout, as well as to conjure up ghosts and a storm of supernatural proportions. Petter Wahlbäck's sound and Christie Chiles Twillie's compositions fill out the immersive (and often appropriately oppressive) experience of the production.

As Beartrice, Britt Edwards establishes the character as commanding, domineering, and single-minded, but there is nothing one-dimensional about the performance. Edwards finds every fleeting moment of vulnerability and softness the play offers, without ever backing away from the reality that the world and Beartrice's place within it has whittled away her choices until the house has become an object of fixation. Edwards' performance is especially powerful near the end, when she finally places her seal on the papers that emancipate Makeda.

As Makeda, Shenise Brown does incredible work distinguishing the character's speech, movement, and mannerisms from those of the other household members who occupy a different segment of this rapidly changing world. Brown's performance is loud, large, and broad, tiptoeing right up to the edge of stereotype or caricature, but doing so in an absolutely deliberate and controlled way that adds a thought-provoking, productively uncomfortable element to the production that is a credit to both Brown herself and Boseman's direction.

Brown furthermore shows stunning skill and range, particularly in the scene where Makeda, at Marie Josephine's request, allows Lazare to possess her. This requires Brown and Ron Quade, who is harrowing and impressive in this relatively brief scene, to roughly mirror one another's movements and facial expressions throughout a truly spooky, heightened scene where Lazare recounts the circumstances of his death. The result is really stunning.

As Agnès, Odette, and Maude Lynn, Kaylah Marie Crosby, Aysia Slade, and Sierra Coachman, respectively, in some senses function as a unit. Agnès is the most vibrant and determined to escape the house and their mother's influence, and Crosby does good work capturing the character's naiveté in eagerly taking steps to attach herself to the first white man who shows interest in her, as well as the legitimacy of her desire to break free of her mother's control and obsessions.

Coachman, working with the least developed material in the play, manages to impart depth to Maude Lynn that takes the character beyond just being the dutiful, pious opposite of Agnès. And for her part, Slade plays Odette with a powerful mix of tentative ebullience borrowed from Agnès that transforms into something darker and wilder in response to both the casually cruel colorism Agnès exhibits and the taste of freedom Odette gets as she participates in her sister's scheme.

Jimiece Gilbert (Marie Josephine) and Sandra Adjoumani (La Veuve) also offer strong, engaging performances in two roles that are a bit underwritten. Gilbert's handling of the trope of the "mad woman in the attic" is skillful and nuanced. Her Marie Josephine is both haunting and celebratory. Adjoumani's La Veuve begins as an interesting, almost-caricature counterpart to Brown's Makeda, and the work that Adjoumani and Edwards do together, hauling the history that Beartrice and La Veuve share along behind them develops the character well beyond this.

We see unfortunately little of Bryan Nicholas Carter as Marie's dead lover, The Man With The Bamboula, but his drumming is an integral part of the play's mesmerizing feel, and his dance and powerful song with Marie Josephine near the play's ending are both simply gorgeous.

The House That Will Not Stand runs through December 14, 2025, at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit invictustheatreco.com.