Let’s not mince words and please forgive the hyperbole; there’s not much time for that. Between tonight and its closing on Sunday, there are eight performances of “The Invisible Hand” at ACT Theatre. I would strongly implore everyone reading to do what they can to make it to at least one of those performances. It is one of the most potent and provoking, and timely, theatre productions I’ve ever seen.
It’s not a coincidence that opening night was on September 11. Ayad Akhtar’s play centers around Nick Bright (Connor Toms), an American financial genius who is kidnapped and held hostage in Pakistan by a militant Islamic group. He works for Citibank, but they can’t work for his release because US law forbids “negotiating with terrorists,” so Nick’s $10M ransom gets ignored by the outside world. While in captivity, he doles out some financial advice here and there, to positive results. He tells one Pakistani soldier, Dar, to buy potato futures and sell them at a higher price, then convert his profits from rupees to the more stable American dollar. Nick is able to convince the Imam that he’s worth more alive than dead and that he can raise his ransom through the markets. A brute captor, Bashir (Elijah Alexander deserves lots of credit for this performance) is assigned to watch over Nick and execute is transactions. Nick is not to use a computer while in captivity.
What Ayad Akhtar does so well with this play is establish early on what the stakes are, or what we think they are. And the stakes are very high, but get higher.
The parallel educations that Nick and Bashir make up the nucleus of the play. Bashir learns from Nick how the global financial markets operate, and he goes from being unsure of how short-selling and call and put options work to finding Nick’s senior thesis from Princeton for light reading. Nick must come to grips with the real-world implications of global finance on the lives of the people affected. Nick is an idealist who believes that markets are too large for manipulation and in the benevolence of the United States, and he sees numbers on a spreadsheet as something he can exploit for financial gain. Saying that the rupee is one crisis away from insolvency is one thing, but what will a worthless currency mean for the Pakistani people who cannot just go to the bank and convert their rupees into dollars ahead of the next global event?
The play felt particularly timely when Nick was asked to name the recently-murdered journalist and there’s an awkward pause before he gives Daniel Pearl’s name. I wasn’t the only one waiting (for what felt like at least a minute but was more likely less than five seconds) for Nick to say Steven Sotloff or James Foley, two journalists killed by ISIS this summer.
“The Invisible Hand” doesn’t so much as prompt discussion about timely events, it forces a reevaluation of entire belief systems and ideologies. When I saw it on Sunday evening, my literally last-minute ticket put me in the front row next to two older theater patrons. Their seats were vacant after intermission. I couldn’t help but wonder what prompted them to abandon the show. I’m only projecting, of course, but I wonder if the impulse is similar to the one that removes books like The Working Poor: Invisible in America from classrooms. Maybe they were tired or ill, but boredom seems like an impossibility (and the second half was were the stakes and tension reached a boiling point). “The Invisible Hand” doesn’t pander to your existing beliefs, but forces one to
I honestly don’t know what more art can provide to the people who choose to view it.
{“The Invisible Hand” plays at ACT Theatre through Sunday, September 28. See it now.}