There are many reasons to go to the theater, but to see something that feels like a film or a TV episode usually isn’t one. That’s the main problem with Ayad Akhtar’s new play about a bright young money guy, Nick (Connor Toms), who has been kidnapped in Karachi by Islamic terrorists. Because his employer doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, Nick offers to earn his ransom by trading on the volatile Pakistani financial markets. Tense setup? Check. Dense background details about the worlds of finance and Pakistani politics (albeit clunkily exposited)? Check. A sense of emotional investment and caring about the outcome? Strangely, not much in Akhtar’s follow-up to his Pulitzer-winning Disgraced.
Nick’s captors include Dar (the boyish Erwin Galan), Dar’s ambitious supervisor Bashir (the apt Elijah Alexander), and their commander Imam Saleem (William Ontiveros), an older cleric. Though Akhtar’s given each one an affable side as well as a ruthless one, they still come off as cartoonish, probably because they spend so much time in well-coached accents explaining things you would learn in The Economist. Because the script chops the action into dozens of tiny scenes spaced over many months (identified by wall monitors, e.g., “Ten weeks later”), director Allen Nause usually hasn’t got more than a few beats per scene to work with. For example, the subplot of Nick’s progressive efforts to file the mortar out of a chunk of Matthew Smucker’s cinderblock cell set is neither plausible nor interesting, especially since there’s no plot payoff for these efforts. To compensate for a lack of momentum, the production leans on Brendan Patrick Hogan’s Bollywood-style musical blasts in the interscene breaks, as boisterous as a one-day sale at the bazaar.
Akhtar’s topical engagement with the world is important enough that audiences can probably forgive some theatrical shortcomings. For fans of shows like Homeland, this didactic, issue-exposing play may hit the spot; others may groan at the exposition. And Michael Lewis devotees may enjoy the bits in which Nick explains to Bashir how to game the market. But for those seeking a deeper psychological exploration of the characters themselves in crisis, The Invisible Hand misses the target. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676. $55 and up. Runs Tues.–Sun.; see act theatre.org for schedule. Ends Sept. 28.
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