There are no spoilers in what follows. Privacy star Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked the audience not to reveal the play's big secrets, and I can respect that.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when there really are no secrets, a reality presented with great humor and wit in this new play at the Public Theater, which comes by way of London.

While the premise here is simple--privacy is dead--the ramifications are totally insane.

The personal repercussions of this radical loss of privacy, ranging from a kind of hyper-connected loneliness to the most mind-numbing invasions of what used to be personal, somehow become the fodder for comedy in this remarkable production.

Along with many laugh lines, the driving conflict in Privacy is the desire to be known to others without becoming a victim of that desire.

The problem is the solution.

While not anti-corporate per se, the focus in Privacy is set squarely on corporations and/or government agencies with a stake in the information that comprises who we are as consumers and/or potential threats.

Instances of the way our privacy doesn't exist strafe the audience throughout the play.

Among the implicit criticism of these various incursions on privacy, there is an opportunity for enterprises looking to turn a public relations dark cloud into the silver lining of a teachable marketing moment.

Information matters.

In the opening scene, the main character known only as Writer, played by Radcliffe, is joined on stage by Researcher (an onstage presence before the play begins and there throughout) and a psychoanalyst. At issue is Writer's breakup with a partner who left because he was too withholding of his innermost self.

It is quickly established that "self" here has value way beyond the transitory nature of individual consciousness or interpersonal relationships. Specifically, it has market value. Those two very different valuations are immediately pitted against each other in a sort of privacy death match.

Facebook, we are told, knows someone is going to cheat or break up with a partner long before the person doing the cheating or breaking up knows. Writer is not playing by the rules by withholding himself from the intimate strangeness of the social-media over-share that allows the all-knowing eyes of the market and the NSA to predict the future--or get it wrong.

Nothing people haven't heard before, but there's more...

Anyone who's ever tried to sell goods or services of any stripe knows that having access to a person's "innermost self" gives sales a leg up when it comes time to close.

Up against that El Dorado of All Marketing Information in Privacy is Writer's reluctance to participate in the privacy give-away that characterizes not only social-media use (to start dating, stalk his ex, promote his "brand") but any use of the various ways people exist online.

The question of how much to share becomes central, and that is the teachable marketing moment. There's an old Street saying you'll know all too well: Bears and bulls eat, but pigs get slaughtered.

There is nothing in the play that one wouldn't know from regular news consumption about the various ways privacy has devolved since the advent of internet marketing, but the cumulative effect is nevertheless startling.

Presented by a host of well-known entrepreneurs, theorists, and activists played by the extremely funny Rachel Dratch and three other actors--there's even an appearance by Edward Snowden, who recites some of Caliban's famous "be not afeard" speech from The Tempest--Privacy stages a sort of sketch comedy of (privacy) errors.

Cautionary tale.

But the play also points the way to a train-wreck for companies and other organizations that exist only for the exploitation of the personal information that moves around in the regular commission of daily life.

The insight that consumers will choose to do business with companies that give them options regarding the utilization of their personal information is not a new one--and a philosophy about building businesses and the systems they use to make bank on that consumer reality already exists. There's even a term of art for it: Privacy by design.

If there is a takeaway lesson in Privacy, it's that the jig is up.

While the play is a fantastically entertaining existential shrug at our overexposure as a society, it simultaneously exposes a potential tipping point. Given the choice, I'm guessing most people would like a more nuanced relationship with the companies and agencies that make it their business to know absolutely everything about everyone.