“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: 

How much are invasion of privacy and outright theft permissible in the effort to create great art?  Is any creative work truly original? And how do the sudden advances in Artificial Intelligence alter the answers to these questions, and make them more urgent? 

Akhtar seems more interested in exploring these questions than in the plot he develops as the frame onto which to hang the discussion. At the same time, the playwright does not seem to have the same firm handle on the promises and pitfalls of AI as he has shown about the price of assimilation (““Disgraced,”which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), international terrorism (“The Invisible Hand,”), and  the excesses of the financial system (“Junk”)  But then who knows anything about Artificial Intelligence, which is a work in progress, as is our understanding of it? Akhtar exhibits his customary intelligence about an issue of the day In his first New York production in seven years, one greatly enhanced by spot-on special effects.

There is another age-old question “McNeal” poses: Why are so many great writers such jerks?

Downey, who has specialized in portraying unlikeable characters, most memorably Lewis Strauss in “Oppenheimer” but even his superhero Iron Man is arrogant and self-involved, seems especially equipped to address this question. We first meet Jacob McNeal in his doctor’s office. Dr. Grewal (Ruthie Ann Miles) tells him that she hasn’t read any of his books, because she doesn’t want her medical judgment to be clouded by her reaction to them. “I’m not sure I would appreciate how you write about women.”  McNeal responds with an argument: “The good thing about literature — it’s not about liking the people in it. That’s the movies. TV.”  What matters is that they be interesting. He cites Raskolnikov the murderer in “Crime and Punishment” and the title character of Madame Bovary. “I mean not even the people in the book like Emma Bovary.” 

There are many such literary references, some of which are truly intriguing (Did you know that Shakespeare’s “King Lear” was his rewrite of somebody else’s older play “King Leir”?); others strike me as self-consciously rarified to the point of unintentional parody: McNeal reminisces dreamily with an old flame  about meeting at the Updikes, then taking a walk in the park and talking about Schopenhauer.

Can we say the same of Jacob McNeal that he says of Emma Bovary? He’s self-destructive, on and off psych meds, drinking even though the doctor says it’s killing him. He’s neurotic, insisting that his agent remove two of his titles from her bookshelf and shred them, apparently because he no longer likes them. He says things he knows will alienate people in the name of being truthful, asking an interviewer from the Times who is Black whether she was “a diversity hire,” and telling her that he was envious of Harvey Weinstein. We learn that his wife committed suicide, and eventually discover it occurred shortly after he had an affair with an editor at the book review section of the Times. His adult son Harlan is furious at him, in part for stealing stories that occurred in Harlan’s life without even telling him. And perhaps worst of all, there arises a question of who he betrayed for his latest book (a question that is answered in the play, but that I won’t spoil.) 

If all this sounds like a familiar (even stereotypical) figure in a literary drama, the show is suffused with Artificial Intelligence – or at least a simulation of AI, because Jacob McNeal (and I suspect, Ayad Akhtar) is increasingly obsessed with it.  The first thing we see on stage is a projection of a smart phone screen, with questions (we learn soon after are from Jacob) and answers from GPT about who will win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  McNeal gets his answer while in his doctor’s office – with a call to his smart phone from Sweden. His Nobel address is largely about AI, in which he discusses the ramifications of AI having largely written three books on the New York Times Bestseller list. (The play is supposed to be taking place “in the very near future.”) 

AI “scenes” on screen – sometimes typewritten words, sometimes deep fake videos (kudos to projection designer Jake Barton) — alternate with those involving human beings. Most of the scenes with humans reveal  McNeal’s past, rather than moving forward (and the other actors, as good as they are, portray characters who seem to exist primarily to illuminate McNeal’s character.) By contrast, the AI scenes seem  to evolve, subtly, cleverly, becoming more and more prominent. There is even a hint that AI might be taking over the writing of “McNeal” itself as it unfolds.   Is this a warning?

McNeal
Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through November 24
Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $175 – $371.  Digital lottery: $48
Written by Ayad Akhtar
Directed by Bartlett Sher
sets by Michael Yeargan & Jake Barton, costumes by Jennifer Moeller, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Justin Ellington & Beth Lake, and projections by Jake Barton. 
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Brittany Bellizeare as Natasha the reporter, Rafi Gavron as Harlan (the son), Melora Hardin as Francine the editor, Andrea Martin as Stephie (the agent), Ruthie Ann Miles as Sabral Grewal (the doctor), and Saisha Talwar as Dipti (agent’s assistant).