‘McNeal’ Review: Robert Downey Jr.’s Broadway Debut Is Stale and Confounding
variety.comAramide Tinubu As technology continues to evolve, the arts and humanities are having a reckoning, and it’s not pretty. In his newest play, “McNeal,” Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”) confronts the ethics of AI, plagiarism and ownership in storytelling.
Directed by Bartlett Sher, the play centers on Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut), an acclaimed novelist whose alcoholism and mental illness have come to a tipping point at the crux of his career.
While beautifully staged and produced, “McNeal” is a dull and garbled play that says very little about ethics and artificial intelligence and instead hoists up a pompous and exhausting man who has only ever cared about himself and his legacy. “McNeal” opens in a doctor’s office.
Anticipating a call from the Swedish Academy, which is set to announce the annual Nobel Prize winner in literature, Jacob ignores the pleas of Dr.
Read more on variety.com
