Star power is not to be underestimated. Not only can it bring in audiences who may not normally attend new Broadway plays, it can also infuse a problematic work with a gravitas it might not normally possess. Such is the case with Lincoln Center Theater’s production of the new drama by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced, The Invisible Hand) that touches on such themes as artificial intelligence, plagiarism, and writerly inspiration without really coming to grips with any of them. But it doesn’t matter, thanks to the presence of Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. Downey, who recently won an Oscar for the film Oppenheimer and is here making his stage debut, brings such charisma and magnetism to McNeal that it’s easy to overlook the play’s flaws.
His character, Jacob McNeal, feels uncomfortably like an archetype, an acerbic, acclaimed novelist wrestling with private demons including his wife’s recent suicide. A heavy drinker who has trouble staying on the wagon even while taking medications for a serious health issue, McNeal comes across like Philip Roth minus the Jewishness or Norman Mailer minus the machismo.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★★ review here.]
As the play begins, he’s informed that he’s the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honor to which he responds by going on a bender after the awards ceremony and being photographed in a public fountain in his underwear. He’s certainly a handful for his long-suffering publicist (Andrea Martin, predictably hilarious), who finally manages to snag him a long hoped-for New York Times profile despite the fact that he had an affair with one of the paper’s editors (Melora Hardin) that didn’t end well.
Yes, McNeal is the sort of lovable rogue who enjoys fame and fortune while screwing up every relationship in his life, including the one with his son Harlan (Rafi Gavron), who blames him for his mother’s death. When they see each other after a long estrangement, Harlan threatens to reveal that McNeal’s upcoming book has been plagiarized from an unusual source.
McNeal’s response proves surprising in more ways than one, including a dramatic revelation that brings the play into tawdry territory that feels unearned. It also provides the character one of many opportunities to expound on how writers inevitably borrow from each other, citing such authors as Shakespeare and David Foster Wallace as examples.
It’s a recurring theme of the play which eventually delves, often amusingly, into the literary ramifications of the sort of A.I. that can mimic a writer’s style to an uncanny degree. Large-scale projections (designed by Jake Barton) provide numerous examples of the phenomenon via texts and, more strikingly, a series of images in which Downey’s face morphs into various other figures including Barry Goldwater, the subject of one of McNeal’s novels.
But the playwright doesn’t succeed in blending the evening’s formulaic storyline with its philosophical musings. We never really feel any emotional engagement with the characters, many of whom seem diagrammed as if by A.I. And while the ideas being thrown about are intellectually engaging up to a point, they ultimately feel like a poorly thought-out think piece.
But then there’s Downey, who despite his lack of theatrical experience makes his McNeal fascinating despite the character feeling like a Frankenstein’s monster composed of various literary figures. Delivering his witticisms in that trademark dry, deadpan fashion that made his Tony Stark an iconic figure in Marvel movies, he’s onstage for nearly all the play’s 100 minutes and proves compelling throughout. He’s well matched by such supporting players as Melora Hardin, Brittany Bellizcare, Saisha Talwar, and Ruthie Ann Miles, who all make vivid impressions in underwritten roles.
Director Bartlett Sher delivers a typically lavish LCT staging, dominated by Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton’s set designs so sleekly modernistic that it makes Apple stores feel like antique shops.
McNeal opened September 30, 2024, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and runs through November 24. Tickets and information: lct.org
