It’s no secret that AI is both a beneficial tool and the bane of many human workers’ existence. Personally, it’s hard for even me to find a gray area on the subject, probably because I’ve never felt a need to use it. Yet many people use it for writing purposes, but how does it fully benefit a writer in terms of telling a compelling story? It can draw ideas, mostly from other texts, but it won’t exactly be truly original. Come to think of it, nothing in the world of storytelling is completely original anymore; many plot structures and character archetypes/arcs get reused time and time again (I should know; I’m a writer and I’ve probably gone through a plethora of stock whatever). But what if a writer began to depend quite heavily on other stories and AI, and used it to manufacture almost an entire career? That here is a question examined in LCT’s premiere of “McNeal,” by Ayad Akhtar.
To say I absolutely loved this play is an overstatement. If anything, I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with it that makes me wanna go back and revisit it. It’s one of those plays I’ve seen in quite some time that actually compels its audience to think, and I mean think deep, on the topics being presented. The amount of questions that came about between me and my family afterwards were all falling along the lines of “is anything truly original anymore?,” “what will we do, and who are we ready to step on, in order to stay on top?,” and “what does a future with AI becoming a new medium look like within various industries?” It’s a lot to digest and contemplate, and I think that’s what makes Akhtar’s work stick with you long after the play’s ended it’s swift 100 minutes. But that’s not to say this play’s got some bugs. I think it’s main issue is it suffers from a multitude of holes that needed some filling in terms of both overall connective tissue and quite a lot of unfinished business/arcs among characters that aren’t our title character. I was hungry for more with the other characters, but the trouble is you only get them in one scene each (unless your Andrea Martin playing a feisty literary agent that gets a little extra scene work and you manage to steal the show). It’s understandable that some things should be left open-ended, but Akhtar could at least close up some gaps in the featured characters instead of us simply watching McNeal both begin to topple off his perch and play his game of wanting to not get caught, but also seemingly wanting to.
In examining this play with even closer scrutiny, it feels like Akhtar is putting us directly within the mind of the title character and is a semi-examination of his relationships of the people, particularly the women with the addition of one son, in his life. Think of the play like Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women,” infused with some existential darkness and morality that can be found in the works of Chekhov and something a bit Shakespearean. While this ideology is quite an interesting setup and form of storytelling, it tends to fall kinda flat in a few scenes. This ideology can even be seen in Bartlett Sher’s compelling, minimalist-but-video-design-filled staging. Sher knows how to make it all move with swiftness and nuance, allow the scene work to shine through, and even can bring the greater intensity factor via a face morphing, larger-than-life AI rendering of our leading man (approved and co-created by him). Which now brings us to what makes the heart of this beast beat: Robert Downey, Jr.
Even with a slightly indeterminable Texan accent, Downey brings his typical charm, smooth talking, and Stark-energy to the Broadway stage, and succeeds! When it comes to Downey’s McNeal, you like him, you hate him, you pity him, you ponder his true motives all at once. Downey knows how to attract an audience in everything he does, and this one for me is no exception. The arc he’s created for this character is one of an almost MacBeth-like nature, only the death part is kinda questionable, and that’s all I plan to say on that without ruining anything.
“McNeal” is certainly a play for our time, even if not a perfect play. If you’re looking for a play that causes you to think deep, this is the play for you. If you’re just a fan of Iron Man, this is the play for you. But if you’re just an atypical theatre goer who likes to keep it easy on the brain, then maybe think about it before buying a ticket. But I will say, through the flaws this play has, you won’t find anything more exceedingly relevant to our place and time on Broadway this season.
