Robert Downey Jr. To Make Broadway Debut This Fall In Ayad Akhtar’s New Play ‘McNeal’

Robert Downey Jr. will make his his Broadway debut in the lead role of McNeal, the new play by Ayad Akhtar, author of the Tony-nominated Junk and the Pulitzer-winner Disgraced.

Downey will play the title character Jacob McNeal in the production staged by Lincoln Center Theater and directed by Bartlett Sher (To Kill A Mockingbird).

McNeal will begin previews Thursday, September 5, and open on Monday, September 30, at LCT’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The production will play a strictly limited engagement through Sunday, November 24.

Complete casting will be announced at a later date.

The official synopsis: “Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Jacob McNeal is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.”

McNeal will have sets by Michael Yeargan & Jake Barton, costumes by Jennifer Moeller, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Justin Ellington & Beth Lake, and projections by Jake Barton. McNeal is produced by Lincoln Center Theater in association with Team Downey.

Downey, of course, is the Academy Award-winning actor (Oppenheimer) whose film credits include Iron Man, Tropic Thunder and Chaplin, among many others. McNeal will mark his first time on Broadway.