As technology continues to evolve, the arts and humanities are having a reckoning, and it’s not pretty. In his newest play, “McNeal,” Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”) confronts the ethics of AI, plagiarism and ownership in storytelling. Directed by Bartlett Sher, the play centers on Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut), an acclaimed novelist whose alcoholism and mental illness have come to a tipping point at the crux of his career. While beautifully staged and produced, “McNeal” is a dull and garbled play that says very little about ethics and artificial intelligence and instead hoists up a pompous and exhausting man who has only ever
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