I’m a sucker for the Iron Man movies. I love Tony Stark who uses his wealth to combat crime and terrorism. Robert Downey, Jr plays Tony Stark aka Iron Man, and his role has won him a legion of fans. That was clear from the audience's reception for him in his Broadway and LCT debut in the new play “McNeal” by Ayad Akhtar ((“Junk,” “Disgraced”).

Two plotlines of the play are introduced immediately as McNeal, a noted writer, is awaiting news from both his doctor (Ruthie Ann Miles) and the Nobel committee. First the good news-he has won the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature. Then the bad- his doctor tells him that he must stop drinking. She warns that the experimental drugs she has put him on will interact badly with alcohol and give him hallucinations.

Although he may be a gifted writer, McNeal isn’t a nice guy. He was a lousy husband and had affairs. Later his estranged son, Harlan (Rafi Gavron,) accuses him of having stolen his dead mother’s work and passing it off as his own. Harlan threatens to send the original to the New York Times and reveal his father to be a fraud. There’s also the implication is that McNeal drove his wife to suicide while undermining her own work as a writer.

McNeal feels that it’s okay to borrow from other sources if you then turn it into a masterpiece. In accepting the Nobel, he cites King Lear, noting that Shakespeare created a master work using someone else's material. His attitude leads to the theme of AI which runs through the 95 minute production.

Whereas most writers I know dread AI, McNeal wholeheartedly embraces it. McNeal goes one step further in his use of ‘other sources’ by feeding those sources, several of them famous pieces of literature, into AI and instructing it to create a story in his own style. The special effects of AI flashed on the LCT screens in front of the audience. (sets by Michael Yeargan & Jake Barton, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Justin Ellington & Beth Lake, and projections by Jake Barton.

The play is directed by Bartlett Sher but even he can’t fix Akhtar ‘s problematic script. The speeches, especially the lengthy Nobel acceptance speech seem to ramble. Scenes don’t flow well. McNeal agrees to be interviewed for the New York Times Magazine and somehow ‘wins’ the reporter over, but I’m not sure how. Although Downey personally is charming and agreeable, his character certainly isn’t and there’s no reason to see why the reporter and his agent’s assistant find him appealing. The talented supporting cast members each only get a brief scene, Miles as the doctor, Melora Hardin (The Office) as the former mistress and Andrea Martin, the agent whose comic talents are pretty much wasted.

Is McNeal about guilt or creativity? Or is it the inevitability of AI? Ironically his doctor refers to Suarez, an AI program to predict what will happen to her patient if he doesn't begin to comply so AI is omnipresent. Although he is seemingly opposed to using AI for creativity, McNeal has embraced it, maybe too much.

The play distracts us with effects. How does technology fit in with individual creativity? In fact, at times it appears as if AI is actually writing scenes of this play and even controlling the narrative. In his acceptance speech, McNeal notes that three books on the best selling list were written by AI but no one died because “AI knows how much we hate dying, how much we lie to ourselves about it, and it's all too happy to help us forget.”

AI caters to human desires for upbeat positive, happy endings. So maybe that’s why the play didn't work. Even AI couldn't give McNeal a happy ending.