The Invisible Hand

The invisible hand of the financial market is rendered plain as day in Ayad Akhtar's engrossing play "The Invisible Hand." An American executive is kidnapped for ransom. Once he convinces his kidnappers that they will never get the ransom they're looking for, he persuades them to allow him to game the financial markets to earn his freedom. In the process, the prisoner educates his captors about the slimy underbelly of global economics.

At its basics, it's the story of a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in a battle he didn't know was being fought, a treatise on terrorism. Dig a little deeper, though, and you'll find a discourse of the nature of political and economic power between nations and individuals.

The play opens on the prisoner, Nick Bright, talking to his guard, Dar, about commodities trading and the security of currency. Dar is telling Nick about the success he's enjoyed due to Nick's advice. They are interrupted by a swaggering Bashir, the man who orchestrated the kidnapping. Bashir takes issue with the growing familiarity between Dar and Nick, and angrily shuffles Dar out.

Bashir, played with brashness and fixed intensity by Imran Sheikh, is the fulcrum of the play. He and Nick (Connor Toms) engage in heated philosophical argument about capitalism, the evils of imperialism, and the nature of greed. Through the lens of the imbalanced relationship of captor and captive, playwright Akhtar executes a sophisticated shadow play of the imbalanced relationship between the United States and the rest of the world.

Turning the power dynamic upside down, Akhtar demonstrates how less powerful nations are at the mercy of wealthy nations. "He who controls currency controls the world." When Nick, in shackles and deprived of food and contact for three weeks, begs not for his freedom but for the opportunity to make more money, his freedom is a metaphor and indictment of the capitalist system. No one is ever really free, Akhtar seems to say, as long as he is making money for someone else.

Navigating the rugged terrain of the corrosive power of greed, man's inhumanity to man, international politics and labyrinthine economic principles, Akhtar simplifies where he can, sometimes to the detriment of nuance. The subject matter is understandable, but the plot and characters are archetypal, black and white.

Both iterations of the set, comprising the rough cinder block cell and the better-appointed but still Spartan work-station/office cell, hint at the harsh Pakistan environment. Playing out discussions about transactions involving tens of millions of dollars in such mean circumstances reinforces the economic disparity.

Two things marred the otherwise solid production. The first is small; the sound used for the cell door closing sounded initially like a gunshot, leading to an incorrect assumption that one of the characters had been taken offstage and executed. The other, more egregious error was the brusque ending. The audience was left abruptly, not in a welcome denouement but with a slammed door. The subject matter of the play was complex, and the action in the last few minutes so fast, that the end deserved something more.

According to the Imam in the first act, "We are prisoners of a corrupt country of our own making." He is speaking of Pakistan, but after this dialogue about global economics, it seems the same is true of all nations. We live in a system that serves the few and injures the many, and after looking at the complexity and tangled nature of our global society, the playwright offers little hope for a viable alternative.

"The Invisible Hand" runs through April 5 at the Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St. in Portland. For information or tickets, call 503-241-1278 or visit http://www.artistsrep.org/onstage/2014-15-season/the-invisible-hand.aspx