McNeal
4 / 10
Or does he? It’s hard to know. Nothing in McNeal is convincing: The characters are thin, the timelines are off, the situations are at once implausible and cliché. (When McNeal is negotiating his contract, he is shown a big number on a cell phone—barely a step up from a folded paper slid across a table.) The play’s middle scenes—McNeal’s lurid confrontation with his son (Rafi Gavron) and an off-the-rails interview with a young, Black New York Times reporter (Brittany Bellizeare)—ring utterly false, and the actors elsewhere seem flat: Andrea Martin as McNeal’s agent, Ruthie Ann Miles as his doctor, Melora Hardin as his former mistress. McNeal is the only one with any dimension, but neither his dialogue nor Downey's guarded, petulant delivery suggest the charm that others impute to him. Dressed in a writerly uniform of corduroy blazer and jeans, he’s a standard-issue manchild; the play feels a bit like spending 90 minutes with Bill Maher on a crabby day.
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