Review: Culture and Currency Clash in MKE Rep's Razor Edged THE INVISIBLE HAND

An economic term defines and unravels the life of an American investment banker held captive by Pakistanis in Milwaukee Rep's current production The Invisible Hand. At the intimate Stiemke Studio, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, educated and raised in a Milwaukee suburb, travels to near future Pakistan in his play where financial markets crash and burn in the first of four Akhtar productions to be staged at The Rep over the nest several years, including the award winning 2012 drama Disgraced and an original commission for the Milwaukee company.

As the play portends, during the illustrious career of investment banker Nick Bright, an "invisible hand" is a phrase coined by the acclaimed economist Adam Smith, and guides the unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions to acquire wealth, or as Bright states in the play, "guides the confluence and conflict of everyone's self interests."

Mistakenly kidnapped and held hostage in Punjab, Bright relates, pleads with his captors, to use his financial expertise and finesse to raise his ten million dollar ransom over a one year period so he has a prayer of a chance to return to his American family. During the following year either handcuffed in a tiny cell, or chained to a stone that he drags around in his steel prison, Bright relates to his captors, Iman Saleem, Bashir and a steward Dar, while he reminds them, "I've seen what money does to people and what happens when you get a taste of it."

While Bright, a brave, cagey and terrified Tom Colner, appeases his captors, he eventually shows a glimmer of compassion, especially for the young student Bashir, while they share their opposing views on Western interference in Eastern countries, including Pakistan. Shalin Agarwal plays the ambitious Bashir with believability and eventually discovers an overwhelming appetite for power touched with the taste of money, the millions of dollars that Bright's investments can bring the country, or be spent at his own discretion. Bashir later leads Dar, actor Owais Ahmed, to do his bidding, even when killing is on the table. Although Bashir never appears to regret the high cost of his own relationship to the magnificent Tony Mirrcandini, who plays leader Imam Saleem, and Bashir's peculiar plans for the money Bright "earns" without any constraints on his personal decisions.

Throughout this gripping, blood-tingling and mind-bending economic thriller, Akhtar exposes the frailty of capitalism and any country's currency. In this particular instance the Pakistani Rupee, and how random events in any economy can rapidly change a currency's trading value. Bright stresses greed can harm an investor's strategic planning and outcome, and while the play's two acts unfold, the stakes on their increasing wealthy spread sheets climb higher and higher. Akhtar's astute, piercing dialogue raises questions from both cultural perspectives, the American capitalist, who truly tries to use money to create a greater good as Adam Smith believed; and then the Pakistani, who feels "raped and plundered," by Western economies and governments, a country bled for monetary gain, while both their currencies change metaphorical hands through the internet with chilling results.

Scenic designs by Dan Conway place the action first in a brick walled cell, and later in a steel prison, the latter more bleak and sterile than the older prison. While Bright tries to effectively cope with his captivity, his life continually on the line, he constantly faces pressure to really believe if will ever escape and see his family again. Director Lucie Tiberghien paces the production perfectly, allowing the political suspense to bring the audiences to the edge of their seats among conversations where the short and long of investments together with hedging bets could be less than intriguing. As Bright's year continues to progress, he begins to fantasize an end in sight when he reaches 7.1 million towards his ransom--- until Bashir takes investing into his own hands under Bright's tutelage. Meanwhile, Bright carries the stone around his ankle attempting to keep the off shore bank accounts and his fluctuating emotions in check.

When this entire cast debuts at The Rep's Stiemke, along with Director Tiberghien and the renowned, up and coming playwright Ahktar, Milwaukee audiences definitively need to see this contemporary, cutting production multi-layered and constructed similar to a winning stock portfolio. A story where currency collides with cultural politics....whether "economies may be in bull markets, bear markets or the so named pig markets, where investors are slaughtered," figuratively and literally.

The plays's final scenes question the audience, ask them to contemplate, where real power lies in any country, and what are their citizens slaves to: acquiring individual wealth, following political economies and policies, or perhaps succumbing to greed, which usually loses money in the long term according to Bright. What does everyone strive for in their life when thinking where to use the money they earn, and at what cost, emotionally and financially, to others around them, either in their personal realms or across the globe?

While certainly currency, pieces of printed paper or coin, has no actual power to kill anyone, the have or not having of reliable incomes stretch those invisible hands over life's events that play into survival on an individual and community level. Bankers and investors can claim, as when Bashir says to Bright, "There's no blood on your hands." Although in this razor-edged and riveting production's final minutes, the audience will wonder who really controls countries and economies, and think perhaps as Ahktar's impactful The Invisible Hand infers, "Currency really is king."

Milwaukee Rep presents Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand in the Stimeke Studio at the Patty and Jay Baker Theater complex through April 3. For special events connected to the production, performance schedule, tickets, or to subscribe to the 2016-2017 Milwaukee Rep season, please call: 414.224.9480 or visit: www.milwaukeerep.org.

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