McNeal

I left McNeal, the new play in performances at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, thinking I had been pranked. Had this play about a writer and his troubled relationship with artificial intelligence actually been written using AI? It was the only explanation I could find for the talented playwright Ayad Akhtar to be credited with such a middling, mediocre script.

Akhtar, a Pulitzer Prize winner for the compelling drama Disgraced, has tackled dense, academic topics in all of his writing including The Who and the What and Junk. The thorny topic of AI was a promising subject for his next work.  

Technically, he understood the assignment. He wrote a play about AI, set in the “very near future.” But he failed to make a compelling argument or create actual characters that warrant investment. 

Jacob McNeal, the titular character of Akhtar’s play directed by Tony winner Bartlett Sher, is an American author and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Played by Robert Downey, Jr. in his Broadway debut, he is also a narcissist, borderline misogynist and alcoholic suffering from deadly liver damage. The play follows the chaotic days that follow this diagnosis, as McNeal’s newest novel approaches publication and the secrets behind its writing are revealed.

The story of a writer wrestling with the ethical questions inspired by AI could make for thought-provoking production, especially when staged on Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton’s set, which evokes thoughts of Apple products, and digital effects by AGBO, and Barton’s projections of swirling letters with lighting designer Donald Holder. Sound engineers Justin Ellington and Beth Lake further enhance the technically detached atmosphere.

Sadly, instead of an intellectual exploration, Akhtar has written a tired tale of an entitled man-child and the implausibly loyal women who surround him. There is no emotional core driving his actions; rather, Akhtar has played Trauma Mad Libs, placing random acts of pain at random moments. A confrontation with his son, played by an overhyped Rafi Gavron, reveals a long-held lurid secret that, after being met with shock, is never mentioned again. McNeal’s son’s anger - he blames his father for his mother’s suicide - quickly transforms to shock, parallelling the audience’s reaction but does nothing to further or deepen the narrative.

Dressed in jeans and a corduroy blazer, his hair slightly unkempt, Downey certainly looks the part. McNeal is shifty, rakish, erratic, unpredictable, and yet still appealing - in other words, reminiscent of many other roles Downey has played. While he is inexplicably and at times infuriatingly charming, Downey fails to depict any actual vulnerability or crack in his scruffy veneer.  

Comprising the ensemble of women are the heartfelt and underused Ruthie Ann Miles as his doctor; Andrea Martin as his agent and surrogate parent (brash and bossy and hilarious); and Melora Hardin as his former mistress, undeniably elegant but fuming because he has pilfered their history for his many novels. He has encounters with his agent’s assistant Dipti (Saisha Talwar, perky and pleasant), to whom he is both racist and predatory and New York Times Magazine reporter, Natasha Brathwaite (Brittany Bellizeare, excellent). Their scene is by far the most engaging and offers the most insight into McNeal’s determined self-destruction. While being interviewed - though she barely asks any questions - by a young Black woman, the middle-aged white man asks if she is a “diversity hire” and says he looked up to Harvey Weinstein, all the while putting away an entire bottle of bourbon in mere minutes.

The question of loving the art but hating the artist is timeless, but McNeal fails to provoke thoughts of either subject. The play more than questions the authenticity of his work, it shows him utilizing AI to create his most recent novel with sections drawn from the Bible, classic novels, political speeches and his late wife’s unpublished manuscript. While McNeal attempts to justify his actions by claiming that even Shakespeare drew from previous writers - before King Leir, there was King Lear. But Akhtar fails to establish an argument for or against AI, instead relying on the characters to make the argument for him.

The script’s erratic jumping from scene to scene without a connecting thread leaves the viewer questioning the truth of what they are seeing and longing for a satisfying conclusion. Instead, Akhtar serves a disappointingly anticlimactic ending that is followed by another cute quip rather than a catharsis. The lack of cohesion left this critic wondering if this play was a joke or commentary, on the current state of artistic creation. If it was, Akhtar should have waited for the next software update.