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Less than a week after the opening of “Invisible Hand,” which tells the story of American investment banker Nick Bright, who has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom by a militant Islamist group somewhere in Pakistan, and offers to pay his $10 million ransom by teaching his kidnappers how to triple their money by playing the stock market, MTC has extended the play’s run through July 3 (all dates listed here).
MTC’s production on “Invisible Hand” has drawn rave reviews already. The San Francisco Chronicle says “Playwright Ayad Akhtar, who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for ‘Disgraced,’ never writes a scene that feels de rigueur. Part of that comes from the play’s level of intellect. Though it rouses the same passions as any shrewdly executed thriller, it also teaches a detailed finance lesson, one that doesn’t just tell you what shorts and puts are but also delves into opposing interpretations of what 1944’s Bretton Woods Conference meant for the global economy.”
The Marin Independent Journal calls “Invisible Hand” a “tense thrill ride” that is “a deeply nerve-wracking play from the very beginning.” MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis directs the play, keeping “the action unremittingly taut” and “makes contagious the rush of trying to win big: the tingle of greed undercut by the gnawing terror that with one extra second’s hesitation or one mistaken click, you could lose everything.” Minadakis recently sat down for an extensive interview with the Pacific Sun to discuss “his first decade at the helm of the North Bay’s premium professional theater company.”
Craig Marker “is brilliant as his Nick suffers the rigors of captivity and his captors’ unpredictability,” says the San Mateo Daily Journal,” while the Chronicle says Marker “brings the full range of his faculties to Nick’s highs and lows, his fascinating contradictions.”
“Invisible Hand” is MTC’s final production of its 2015-16 season. It returns in September to kick off its 2016-17 season with “August: Osage County,” Tracy Letts’ “fiercely funny, turbo-charged tragicomedy” (The New York Times), which tells the story of the Weston sisters, who reluctantly return home after the death of their father to care for their mother, “cancer stricken, drug-addled, and a bigger piece of work than ever.”
The 411: “Invisible Hand” is at the Marin Theatre Company through July 7. More info and tix.