“McNeal,” currently on at the Vivan Beaumont Theater, is playwright Ayad Akhtar’s exploration into the unexpected confluence of plagiarism, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the canon of western literature through the life and writing of renowned playwright Jacob McNeal (a cantankerous but magnetic Robert Downing Jr) who is, at the play’s onset, “badgering” Chat GPT on his iPhone to predict whether he will win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He does win the Prize.

Later, when Jacob visits his physician Sahra Grewal (an empathic yet no-nonsense Ruthie Ann Miles), she reviews her patient’s recent liver enzyme bloodwork which reveals that the AI-generated Suarez has predicted that Jacob is “hitting Stage 4 liver failure within three months” and needs to stop drinking. The prospect of dying does not seem to rattle Jacob who, he confesses to Dr. Grewal, doesn’t “want to be living in fear anymore. Of anything. Especially not the end.”

Jacob began his journey down his self-chosen rabbit hole long before this recent prognosis. The prolonged excavation of his descent began even before his wife Jessica’s suicide death in 2007. Jacob confesses to his agent Stephie Banic (a dynamic and riveting Andrea Martin) that he wrote his new book with AI. “I took it all in without a shred of judgment. Ten years of journals. All my books. Some other things, too – Hedda Gabler. Lear, of course – have been stealing the best of others around him for years – my dead wife’s unpublished manuscript.” McNeal also confesses to his son Harlan (a broken and unapologetic Rafi Gavron), after Harlan reads an advanced copy of his father’s new book, that he stole Harlan’s story from his high school experience without permission.

But Jacob has been dishonest with himself even before Jessica’s suicide. His delusional state has been the ghost that always haunted him. Drinking only exacerbated the debilitating condition. In the final scenes of Ayad Akhtar’s haunting narrative, continuing to dismiss his prognosis, Jacob begins to hallucinate. In the scene on the park bench, in this hallucinatory state, Jacob confronts Francine Blake (an unforgiving and transparent Melora Hardin) the retired editor at the “New York Times” with whom he had an affair “when Jessica ended up taking her own life” and his son Harlen.

Not unlike the proverbial Scrooge, Jacob is forced to grapple with his troubled past, his even more somewhat disturbed present, and his imminent demise. While this transpires several visitors to the park, played by the other characters in the play, watch the integrative core of Jacob’s ego disintegrate. Finally, when Jacob steps up to the window “of a both a room and – a digital landscape,” the audience becomes painfully aware of the outcome. Robert Downey Jr’s performance here is a tour de force.

In his Broadway debut, Academy Award winner Robert Downing Jr devours the challenging role of Jacob McNeal and delivers an authentic performance as the tormented and complicated character Jacob McNeal. The actor commands the Vivian Beaumont stage with ease and is the perfect ensemble performer giving the remaining cast of six opportunities to succeed in their equally challenging roles.

Set designers Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton, lighting designer David Holder, sound designers Justin Ellington and Beth Lake, and Jake Barton’s projections successfully create a space that transects human cognition, and the AI dematerialized virtual space of digital cognition. ChatGPT – Open AI images projected from Jacob’s iPhone coexist with the human narrative in the scenes of “McNeal” also stream across the stage.

Thanks to the cast, the director Bartlett Sher, and the entire creative team, Ayad Akhtar’s “McNeal” succeeds in being one of this season’s high-scoring Broadway productions.