Microcrisis

Michael Lew's "Microcrisis" is a fantastic play—bubbling, smart, and sharply pointed. Lew takes on the concept of microcredit—the extension of small loans to people in the Third World to encourage entrepreneurship—and asks: What would happen if an investment banker were to gulp up these loans and bundle them into collateral debt obligations and credit-default swaps? You can see it coming, a worldwide bubble, with everyone losing but the banker. And the fun is that you do see it coming. It's a morality play as clear as "Wall Street" and much funnier, a cross between "The Simpsons" and Jonathan Swift.

The play opens with Acquah (William Jackson Harper), a man in Ghana running a tiny mobile-phone leasing business—with two phones. He needs a new one. Enter Lydia (Lauren Hines), a wide-eyed, 19-year-old Bennington intern ready to save the world through Citizen Lend, a microcredit company. Like the devil himself, Bennett (Alfredo Narciso) shows up. He promotes Lydia to CEO, then coaxes Randy (David Gelles), a Harvard grad running the idealistic Ivy Microloan fund, into "partnering" with Citizen Lend.

Lew's dialogue is fast and funny and his invention endless and fresh. When Randy and Lydia team up to cold-call a schoolteacher who's donated to the Ivy Microloan fund, a head pops up to speak robotically in the middle of Randy's spiel. If you've ever received a robo-call, you'll get the joke. Along the way there are also Clare (Jackie Chung), a needy Moody's credit rater with "bacne" who cries because she gets blamed too much; Frankfurt (also played by Harper), who works for the Fed and is faintly paternalistic toward Bennett; and Mrs. Chavez (Socorro Santiago), the swindled schoolteacher.

The acting is top-notch, with the cast hitting the right cartoonish notes but never losing the hearts of their characters. Hines effectively conveys Lydia's girlish waffling between ambition and idealism, while Chung's Clare is wholly original and delightful. Harper's two roles couldn't be more different and both are broadly funny.

Director Ralph B. Peña keeps the action hopping. The production—the play's world premiere—also looks and sounds great, with a set consisting of small (micro?) bank vaults by Clint Ramos and martini-cool music by Shane Rettig. "Microcrisis" is not to be missed.



Presented by Ma-Yi Theater Company at Here Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave., NYC. Sept. 28–Oct. 23. Tue.–Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 4 p.m. Additional performance Sun., Oct. 17, 4 p.m. (212) 352-3101 or www.ovationtix.com.