McNeal

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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s latest work McNeal, his fourth play at Lincoln Center Theater, has been given a very polished, professional production by resident director Bartlett Sher. Its star, this year’s Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. making his Broadway debut, has given the play newsworthiness. The problem with the play is that the author has not made up his mind what his point of view is and as a result this new play on the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence seems unfocused and confused.

Jacob McNeal (Downey), a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honor he has long craved since finding his name on the shortlist 15 years before. In his speech at the Stockholm awards ceremony, he speaks about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence: “Digital machines are not just remaking stories, they’re remaking us. … We like to lie to ourselves. And in our daily habit of self-deception, the computers are our fondest enablers. However, the great artists, writers, books, the great humans, have always chosen not to play along with our lies, but to confront them.”

From this, one would assume that AI is bad for humanity. However, in the very next scene, we discover that McNeal has used it for one of his books. In fact, we learn that he has used appropriation for almost all of his works. His son lets us know that his father has stolen his mother’s only published short story and he recognizes the manuscript of McNeal’s latest book.

McNeal may be a great writer but he has been a first class monster to other people, his late wife who committed suicide, his estranged son, his former mistress. This is Akhtar’s protagonist but are we supposed to admire him? The only reason that we have time for him is that the other characters seem to want to keep him alive since he is not taking his doctor’s diagnoses very seriously. An issue which is never dealt with is the moral question of how to evaluate great art by despicable people. Can we respect the work of people whose ideas or deeds are abhorrent to us? Akhtar never really discusses this issue but he doesn’t seem to like his protagonist.

Much has been made of the play’s use of CHAT GPT which used a computer program to create human-like dialogue and conversation and Deep Fake video technology which creates realistic looking fake images, created by the computer company AGBO. While this gives the play a decidedly modern look, we have seen so much CG in plays in recent years that none of this seems cutting edge or startlingly new.

As Jacob McNeal, Robert Downey Jr. commands the stage at all times. He is the focus of every scene he is in. However, he is neither charming nor charismatic, making McNeal a very unpleasant person, think Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Norman Mailer all rolled into one. He is a bigger than life character but seems to have no redeeming qualities. We even wonder about his writing talent as he admits that so much of his work, if not all, has been appropriated from others.

Under the direction of Sher, the rest of the cast makes up for much of McNeal’s cruelty and nastiness. Two-time Tony Award winner Andrea Martin is delightful as McNeal’s longtime editor Stephie Banic, wry, witty and amusing. As his doctor, the always reliable Ruthie Ann Miles is hampered by her character’s exasperation at not being able to make him stick to her medicines and regimen for prolonging his life. Rafi Gavron as his son Harlan is intensely angry and bitter, a furious presence in his one scene with McNeal. Melora Hardin as his former mistress, a now retired editor of the New York Times, is clear-sighted and irate at the way he had made use of their time together in his writing, as well as how their relationship ended. Brittany Bellizeare is droll and engaging as a NY Times reporter who has come to do a hatchet job on McNeal though she admires his writing. As Stephie’s new assistant Dipti who immediately falls under McNeal’s spell, Saisha Talwar holds her own in such company.

Aside from the slide projections by Jake Barton and the digital composite by AGBO, the sets by Michael Yeargan and Barton are quite attractive, ranging from doctor and agent offices to the comfortable den of McNeal’s upstate residence and the main room of McNeal’s Manhattan pied-à-terre, to Stockholm’s town hall where the Nobel Prize is awarded.  Jennifer Moeller’s costumes are spot on for defining each of the characters. Lighting designer Donald Holder and sound designers Justin Ellington and Beth Lake do fine work.

As in Ayad Akhtar’s plays Disgraced, JUNK and The Who and the What, all of which have been produced by the Lincoln Center Theater, McNeal is always interesting, always arresting. Unfortunately, in McNeal each scene seems to bring up a new theme and never completely finishes with the previous one. The individual confronatations are fine, but they never coalesce into a unified whole other than to depict the messy life of a famous author which can’t be the author’s sole purpose. Is the message that Artificial Intelligence is dangerous or only in the hands of the wrong people?

McNeal (through November 24, 2024)

Lincoln Center Theater

Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 W. 65^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.mcnealbroadway.com

Running time: one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission