Robert Downey, Jr (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

McNeal

By Deirdre Donovan

Ayad Akhtar's McNeal, a new play about artificial intelligence, is likely to please some theatergoers and leave others with deeply furrowed brows. Under the direction of Bartlett Sher, and starring Academy Award-winning actor Robert Downey, Jr., the drama investigates how authors use AI to help them craft their literary works and also save them from that old nemesis: writer's block.

Set in the near future, we meet Jacob McNeal, a renowned American writer who has been a recurring candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Much to his delight, while at his doctor's office, he gets the news that he has won the laurel. But while the honor is enormously satisfying to his ego, once he descends from Cloud 9, he sees that his life baggage is still there: an estranged son Harlan (Rafi Gavron), a life-threatening liver disease, and an inordinate fascination with artificial intelligence.

When the play begins, we see Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton's ultra-sleek set, which looks like the interior of an Apple Store on a slow day. A live feed projection showing the gray screen and blinking cursor of CHAT GPT looms before our eyes, with a digital exchange in progress generated from the question: "Who will win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year?" Although GPT circumvents the question by providing a number of writers' names who have a likelihood of winning the award, it rebounds with its sure-fire nicety: "I hope this was helpful."  Infuriated that his own name wasn't included, McNeal snaps back: "It was not, you soulless, silicon.suck-up."

McNeal is far from a feel-good play. But then Akhtar, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced, has a propensity for writing works with sociopolitical themes that tend to spark controversial conversations.

One of the big pluses of McNeal is that it gives us the opportunity to see the charismatic film star Downey (Oppenheimer) make his Broadway debut. And the good news is that he proves that he is a natural stage actor. He's on stage for almost the entire 90-minute show and seems to have energy to burn as the final curtain comes down.

Andrea Martin (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

While Downey's performance is sterling, Akhtar's play has a few sticking points that keeps it from altogether taking off. Although its subject is certainly pertinent, the trajectory of McNeal's character isn't clearly traced. Case in point: during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at Stockholm City Hall, McNeal notes how artificial intelligence is already ensconced in our culture ("As I address you all, three books on the New York Times Bestseller list were written, largely, by artificial intelligence.") He also cogently points out how Shakespeare spun poetic gold out of an inferior earlier play King Leir, which shares 70% of its words. But, as the play unspools, the protagonist fails to shed any new light on AI or raise that slippery question: What is an author?

One of the show's most intense scenes is when McNeal's adult son Harlan (Rafi Gavron) visits him at his upstate home. Although Harlan is there on the pretext of congratulating his father for his recent laurel, his good will quickly turns to rage as he accuses his father of plagiarizing the unpublished novel of his late mother (she committed suicide when he was 15) in his newly-acclaimed book. Suffice it to say, a lot of the family's dirty laundry gets exposed in this episode.

Harlan isn't the only one trying to push McNeal off his pedestal. A fictive New York Times reporter Natasha Braithwaite (Brittany Bellizeare) reveals to McNeal that she took on the assignment in hopes of possibly bringing him down. While Braithewait finds that she's not immune to McNeal's charm during the interview at his agent's office, she bluntly discusses with him how the New York Times has a tool that screens for plagiarism and artificial intelligence. She notes that she already picked up borrowings in his work, including "Wallace Stevens, King James Bible, some Norman Mailer,"  but, she adds with reluctant respect, "not outright plagiarism."

 

Robert Downey, Jr. and Brittany Bellizeare (Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Digital-centric production values are ideal for Akhtar's play. Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton's 's set, lit by Donald Holder, as well as Barton's projections and AGBO digital composites, are master strokes, especially during the hallucination scene midway through the play. At that point, McNeal's pixilated portrait transforms into the late American politician Barry Goldwater. Given that one of McNeil's most celebrated books is titled Goldwater, this blurring of McNeal's image with Goldwater's speaks volumes about an author's relationship to his literary work.

Besides Downey's star turn, there's some other excellent performances, most notably Ruthie Ann Miles as the no-nonsense Doctor Sahra Grewal who tries to persuade the hard-drinking McNeal to get back on the wagon to save his liver. The rest of the seven-member cast hold their own, even when the script fails to define their characters fully.

Indeed, there's much to chew on in Akhtar's new work at the Vivian Beaumont. Even though McNeal doesn't add up to an altogether satisfying theatrical meal, it does bring Downey and his digital version to the Great White Way.

McNeal

At the Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65^th Street

For more information, visit www.mcnealbroadway.com

Running time: 1:30

Through November 24