Theatre in Review: McNeal (Lincoln Center Theatre/Vivian Beaumont Theater)"Everything is copy," the screenwriter Phoebe Ephron reportedly advised her daughter, Nora -- words taken to heart by Jacob McNeal, a respected novelist whose personal ledger is wildly out of balance. On the plus side, he occupies a singular place in American culture and has just won the Nobel Prize. The debits, however, are staggering: He is drinking himself into cirrhosis. His wife killed herself. His son avoids him like the plague. Meeting Natasha Brathwaite, a Black journalist who comes to interview him for a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, his idea of a conversational icebreaker is, "Were you a diversity hire?" Welcome to the world of McNeal where bad behavior is the norm and satisfaction is elusive. Ayad Akhtar's play is a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged predator. Many of Jacob's so-called loved ones are disgusted by his rummaging through their lives like a ragpicker, stealing details for his books. (As he admits during his Nobel speech, he is, literally, a grave robber, digging up his wife's corpse. "Cradling your dead wife's skull will teach you a thing or two about being alive," he tells his surely baffled audience.) His former lover, a former Times editor, keeps a detailed list of his literary takings, which include the sepsis she incurred during the abortion necessitated by their affair. Such behavior can be chalked up to the everyday hazards of living with an amoral literary genius; far more troubling is the possibility that his newest work -- the first ever to feature a sympathetic and insightful portrait of a female character -- may be a lightly doctored version of his late wife's unpublished memoir. And there's the novella about his suicidal ideations, the product of an artificial intelligence program into which he has fed bits of Hedda Gabler, Oedipus Rex, Madame Bovary, and, for all I know, Valley of the Dolls. I bring up Jacqueline Susann's trash masterpiece because, for all its pontificating about AI and most writers' habitually appropriating ways -- for example, Shakespeare's transformation of a contemporary stage potboiler into King Lear -- McNeal gets bogged down in soap opera complications involving blackmail, incest, and drunken romps in Stockholm fountains. Jacob is a pale imitation of the notoriously brawling, boozing writers from the mid-twentieth century -- as if someone fed Norman Mailer, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald into an AI program, tossing in bits of Larry McMurtry for good measure. (Jacob is a Jew from Texas, subject to the inevitable cultural confusion.) Indeed, the theft of ideas is Jacob's great subject: One of his most lauded novels is titled Goldwater, but its subject is Ronald Reagan, who, we are told, stole Barry Goldwater's political philosophy and repackaged it more attractively for a willing American public. Unfortunately, the play's argument is frequently incoherent, largely because Akhtar is especially weak in parsing the differences between his protagonist's public and private personas. Why would Jacob, who prioritizes his authorial voice above all else, suddenly resort to plagiarism and digital assistance? Why does he rail against AI in his Nobel speech, and then use it for his next book? Furthermore, his path to self-destruction involves several windy and remarkably unconvincing sequences. "I pitched this profile thinking, I don't know, I'd kind of love to take you down," says Brathwaite, sounding like no Times reporter ever. Talking to Jacob's agent, she adds, "He's more charming than I expected." If so, her expectations must have been extraordinarily low. McNeal represents Robert Downey Jr.'s return to the stage after many years and while his technical skills remain intact, he can't make sense of a character who is little more than a bundle of contradictory complaints and self-defeating impulses. "The good thing about literature -- it's not about liking the people in it," he notes and that's true. But Akhtar hasn't found a way to make his anti-hero compelling or even coherent; Downey flails from scene to scene, wrestling with a character who, despite his apparent talent, is little more than a boor. The director, Bartlett Sher, struggles to wrangle the unwieldy series of one-on-one confrontations that make up most of the action. Among the supporting cast, Rafi Gavron, as Jacob's disaffected son, conniving to get the upper hand, and Melora Hardin, as his ex, who acts unprofessionally to protect his reputation and lives to regret it, are stuck with unplayable characters. Ruthie Ann Miles is largely wasted as a tut-tutting doctor. Brittany Bellizeare holds her own as that Times reporter even if the character feels thoroughly unreal. Even the great Andrea Martin must work overtime to make something of Jacob's agent, two parts shark and one part mother-confessor. (Saisha Talwar is charming as Martin's fangirl assistant, who doesn't know from Saul Bellow.) McNeal's most notable feature is its spectacular production design. Michael Yeargan's scenery delivers multiple attractive locations -- including a rustic cabin, a book-filled office, and Jacob's apartment. The upstage wall, which looks like a holster holding a smartphone, is a primary vehicle for Jake Barton's projections of text messages, phone calls, the New York skyline at day and night, the covers of Jacob's books, and the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. The eerie digital composite of Jacob's face seen onstage is by the firm AGBO. Donald Holder's lighting provides many scenes with distinctive color accents. Jennifer Moeller's costumes have been done with a solid eye for character. The sound, by Justin Ellington and Beth Lake, includes music at the Nobel ceremony and gunshots. AI is an issue that won't go away soon, and kudos to Akhtar for being among the first to deal with it. But McNeal suffers from too many unbelievable characters and situations. Like the AI creations it rightfully disdains, the play lacks an authentic voice. --David Barbour 
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