McNeal review: Robert Downey Jr.s awful Broadway play about AI is a total wipeout

One hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission.At Lincoln Center Theater, 160 W.

65th Street.<br>The tiresome Broadway play “McNeal,” starring Robert Downey Jr., is about every windbag’s favorite topic — AI.In Ayad Akhtar’s drama, which opened Monday night at Lincoln Center, those two letters are, of course, supposed to stand for Artificial Intelligence. But as the story ambles on and on, their meaning evolves.To Audience Irritated.Should your sole aim be to watch the Marvel and “Oppenheimer” actor, who’s making his Broadway debut, give a capable performance in his signature Tony Stark staccato, mission accomplished.However, it is, well, a marvel how even the most blinding star power can dim when blacked out by a mind-numbing plot, mouthpiece supporting characters and a Universal Studios-scale set of giant screens that’s an expensive apology for the actual play.Even Iron Man is no match for a fatally shoddy script.The actor plays a brilliant writer and pretentious jerk named Jacob McNeal, whose dream is to win the Nobel Prize in Literature — a Lincoln Center hero if there ever was one.Downey Jr.

does variations on this cold-and-catty type in films all the time, so while he’s undeniably confident and charismatic, no surprises await you.McNeal wins the Nobel, naturally.While talking with his doctor, who’s concerned about his drinking, he gets the fateful call from Sweden and soon he’s flying out to bloviate at Europeans.But the origin of his next novel, “Evie,” is murky. On those enormous screens upstage, we watch the author ask AI to rework classic texts “in the style of Jacob McNeal.” And the writer’s son Harlan (Rafi Gavron), who’s still traumatized by his mother’s suicide, confronts him about the book’s resemblance to material he might have stolen. It sounds more lucid when summarized than as staged by Bartlett Sher — the director’s third crummy new play in as many years. The author-with-a-secret aspect br...