Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr.) is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.
“McNeal” is a great showcase for Robert Downey Jr., making his Broadway debut as the novelist Jacob McNeal, who is unraveling just at the moment of his greatest acclaim. But Downey also seems a vehicle by which playwright Ayad Akhtar attempts to address some age-old questions about the creative process, with a new twist:
Downey, though lacking in stagecraft and more or less acting from beat to beat, is not without merit. He embodies the self-important asshole-yness of a 20th century literary giant with ease, and could likely have crafted a more memorable character had he been written a meatier role. But his McNeal is as wandering and ineffective as the play itself. Akhtar, whose work has always existed in the liminality between tradition and vanguard, is here lost in the slop. McNeal, the character, doesn’t land on any side of the “Is AI good for art, or killing it?” divide, instead treating it with the safe curiosity of a successful man with little to lose in his later years. (I must here grudgingly point to a titan like David Lynch archly commenting on Donald Trump’s value in waking up the national consciousness a few years back.) That’s interesting. But Akhtar does not explore that, attacking the personal choices, rather than the possible ideologies, of his largely archetypal character. McNeal, the play, therefore comes and goes; a mild thumbnail in a growing pile of decreasingly worthwhile content, featuring artists and themes we know and love, borne back ceaselessly into the archive.
2024 | Broadway |
Lincoln Center Theater Broadway Premiere Producion Broadway |
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