‘MCNEAL’: Robert Downey Jr. (center right) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

MCNEAL
A new play by Ayad Akhtar
Directed by Bartlett Sher
Through November 24, 2024
Lincoln Center Theater
at the Vivian Beaumont
160 West 65^th Street
www.lct.org

By Scott Harrah

One might think McNeal—with Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. making his Broadway debut in a drama with the controversial topic of AI (artificial intelligence) as a running theme—would be an instant blockbuster. Written by renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony-nominated playwright Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced and Junk), the play also features a high-tech set by Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton and clever projections by Jake Barton. While this may sound like a winning formula, not everything works but the show is still thoroughly engrossing.

Mr. Downey Jr. plays Jacob McNeal, a troubled well-known novelist with numerous personal problems, including alcoholism. He is self-centered, rude and egotistical; not the most likeable character. It is difficult to have much sympathy for him.

As the story opens, Jacob is seeing his doctor, Sarah Grewal (Ruthie Ann Miles). She tells him that he’s in poor health and he needs to stop drinking for the sake of his liver. He isn’t interested in hearing about his health because he’s waiting for the Nobel committee to announce who will win the prize for literature.

There is much buzz about his latest novel Evie, but people are questioning its origins. Even before the show opens, a projection of a smartphone is seen with someone typing who will win the Nobel for literature. This is clever foreshadowing because we soon learn that Jacob has been using ChatGPT to help him with his writing, but he is doing more than using it for research and outlines. He is actually using it to have AI rewrite classics from Shakespeare to Ibsen in the “Jacob McNeal style.”

AI is rapidly changing the way we do everything, especially in the workforce. Everyone from Hollywood actors and writers to blue-collar workers and journalists are concerned that AI may eventually take away jobs. Many are concerned about the capabilities of ChatGPT and other types of AI because these high-tech applications can do everything from writing an email to composing fiction. All one has to do type in a few keywords and descriptions of what is needed and within a few minutes, AI can produce a grammatically correct and satisfactory but often wooden and stilted email, marketing promotion, and so on. However, AI is never something to use for one’s own writing, but Jacob has become so depressed and down and out from alcoholism and personal problems that he starts using ChatGPT for his novels.

Of course, people soon catch on, and there is a particularly tense scene between Jacob and Natasha Braithwaite (Brittany Bellizeare), a New York Times reporter. The interview was arranged by his savvy literary agent Stephie Banic (Andrea Martin).

Other subplots involve a strained relationship between Jacob and his son, Harlan (Rafi Gavron). The son’s mother was also a struggling writer and died by suicide when Harlan was very young. Harlan cannot stand his father, and there’s a powerful scene in which both have a nasty argument.

Meanwhile, Jacob’s ex-lover Francine Blake (Melora Hardin) is a writer and editor and he is attempting to rekindle their romance. She blasts him for using and exploiting private details about his life for his work.

Despite the final portion of the show unraveling a bit and a grim ending, director Bartlett Sher does a nice job of keeping the show together with all the high-tech projections and lighting. Mr. Sher manages to extract many outstanding performances from the cast. Mr. Downey Jr is the main attraction here, and he definitely delivers, portraying Jacob McNeal as a man with many shortcomings, one whose humanity is often difficult to see on the surface. It’s a big departure for Mr. Downey Jr. after his many Marvel movies and his role in last year’s box-office phenomenon Oppenheimer.  Rafi Gavron gives a heartbreaking performance as Jacob’s son Harlan. Andrea Martin is amazing as Jacob’s agent. It is great seeing Ms. Martin play a serious character for a change, something we have not seen since her Tony-winning performance in the last Pippin revival back in 2013.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 9, 2024
Reviewed at October 5, 2024 press performance

‘MCNEAL:’ Robert-Downey Jr. & Brittany Bellizeare. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘MCNEAL’: Robert Downey Jr. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘MCNEAL’: Andrea Martin. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘MCNEAL’: Melora Hardin & Robert Downey Jr. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

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‘JUNK’: Matthew Rauch & Steven Pasquale. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

JUNK
By Ayad Akhtar
Directed by Doug Hughes
Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont
50 Lincoln Center Plaza
212-362-7200, www.lct.org

By Scott Harrah

The maxim “truth is stranger than fiction” certainly applies to fact-based dramas chronicling the greed, glory and guile of the financial world like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street and the British stage bio-drama Enron. Junk, playwright Ayad Akhtar’s often riveting, unusual follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced, is a fictionalized composite of such real-life Wall Street devils as Michael Millken and Ivan Boesky. It has all the elements of a bona fide blockbuster about the go-go 1980s, complete with high-tech sets by John Lee Beatty.

Steven Pasquale plays Robert Merkin (loosely based on Michael Millken), the mastermind behind a Los Angeles-based investment firm that specializes in hostile takeovers circa 1985. Mr. Merkin gets a lot of media attention for claiming that debt payments can be somehow transformed into big bucks. Much of the story centers on Merkin’s company working on a Pennsylvania company, Everson Steel, a family business run by CEO Thomas Everson, Jr. (Rick Holmes).

A cast of unsavory characters add intrigue to the fast-paced but all-too-familiar action, from corporate shark Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch) to investors Leo Tesler (Michael Siberry) and Murry Lefkowitz (Ethan Phillips), Jacqueline Blount (Ito Aghayere) as a mole planted at Everson Steel, ruthless young journalist Judy Chen (Teresa Avia Lim), and Joey Slotnick as Boris Pronsky, an arbitrageur who profits from manipulating price inefficiencies in financial markets. As confusing as corporate finance can be to the layperson, Mr. Akhtar makes everything unfold seamlessly as if it were a fun escapist Hollywood movie.

John Lee Beatty’s clever sets (featuring flashing numbers and lit-up compartments on stage that may remind some of TV’s “Hollywood Squares”) move the story around brilliantly from Los Angeles to New York to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

Most of the cast of 23 each give solid performances, but Junk is a far cry from Disgraced,  Mr. Akhtar’s play about Islamophobia and a dinner party gone horribly wrong. That show was the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for drama, with an acclaimed Broadway run in 2014. Director Doug Hughes deserves credit for keeping Junk moving at a wonderfully fluid pace, but with so many characters and subplots, the story might have been more focused and powerful with minor trimming of the narrative fat.

As Robert Merkin, Steven Pasquale lacks the sense of Machiavellian menace necessary to truly make the character effective, and this is unfortunate since the whole play is basically his story. Junk is, without question, an entertaining epic about the excesses of the 1980s but it curiously has nothing new or insightful to say about an era when junk bonds and insider trading wreaked havoc in America.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 6, 2017
Reviewed at November 5, 2017 press performance.

‘JUNK’: Teresa Avia Lim & Michael Siberry. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

‘JUNK’: Steven Pasquale. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

‘JUNK’: Ito Aghayere & Matthew Saldivar. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

‘JUNK’: Henry Stram (standing) & Rick Holmes (seated). Photo: T. Charles Erickson

‘JUNK’: The company. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

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