By, John Nathan
2 min read
No other dramatist connects Western and Islamic worlds quite as confidently as American Muslim writer Ayad Akhtar. His New York-set Pulitzer-winning play Disgraced explored the extent to which Islam can exist in liberal Western democracies. This one is less profound, but just as gripping.
It's a thriller set entirely in a breeze-block makeshift cell somewhere in Pakistan. And it, too, offers opposing standpoints: Muslim hatred of the West, and the arrogance with which the West views Islam.
Personifying these positions are Bashir (Parth Thakerar) an angry, second-generation British Pakistani who has moved to the country of his parents' birth. He sees himself as the modern equivalent of the International Brigade who fought Franco. Only, instead of fascism, he's fighting the forces of capitalism and democracy that have, in his view, exploited Muslim nations.
Then there is Bashir's American captive Nick, a middle-ranking economist working for an American bank who Bashir mistakenly kidnapped instead of the head of the bank's Pakistan operation. Nick (Daniel Lapaine) is all too aware that he is not worth the millions Bashir and his imam (Tony Jayawardena) had hoped to raise for local people. So, with the skills to make big bucks on the markets, Nick sets about raising his own ransom, with Bashir as his apprentice. The two are simultaneously in collaboration and opposition. And, through this relationship, Akhtar airs Muslim grievances through Bashir and the American response through Nick. It is a fascinating dialogue.
We learn that Bashir grew up in Hounslow, his bedroom looking out on to the Piccadilly Line that whisked the likes of Nick from Heathrow to central London, completely oblivious to the alienation and anger forming behind those window panes.
Yet by representing the arguments of many Muslims in Bashir's age group - conspicuous among which is the contempt Bashir feels for his parents' generation who, when they left Pakistan, turned their back on "what they should have been working to make better" - Akhtar reveals the disparity between the strength of their anger and the weakness of their reasoning.
For instance, when Bashir describes the resentments that led to him giving up a "soft life" in Britain to fight in Pakistan, he recounts the racism he grew up with, and "humiliation" of having a father who "spent his whole life being stepped and spat on" by people such as Nick. (He means racist capitalists, one assumes) I wanted to say: "Really?. You're in Pakistan holding a Kalashnikov because of that?"
And when Nick argues that, whatever its faults, America has tried to use its power for good since the war - "Better in our hands than it would have been in the Germans," he says. "Or the Russians. Or than it would be now with the Chinese" - Bashir's only response is "I'm going to have to think about that…" Again I wanted to shout: "You're in Pakistan with a Kalashnikov and the idea that America might be a relatively benign force compared to the alternative hasn't occurred to you?"
So, on that level, it feels as if Akhtar's play is a call for militant Islam to at least marshal some decent arguments in its cause. On every other level, The Invisible Hand works as a terrific thriller. Indhu Rubasingham's pitch-perfect production ratchets up tension right to the moment when it is revealed whether Nick will ever see his wife and three-year-old son again.