Video: The MCNEAL Company Gets Ready for Broadway

Broadway is no joke, but Robert Downey Jr., who makes his debut this season in Lincoln Center Theater's McNeal, is up for the challenge. "There's no replacement for the sense of community you get when you're doing theatre," he told BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge. "At this scale, the stakes are so high, so you feel the onus of honoring the tradition. I like that. I like feeling a deep responsibility to do something right."

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.

Downey Jr. leads a company of actors that also includes: Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Andrea Martin, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Saisha Talwar.

"I hope that audiences will be moved," added Akhtar. "I hope that they will take away some things that they feel they can't not wrestle with. I hope they feel compelled to keep thinking about it and to keep feeling about it."

Director Bartlett Sher shared simlar sentiments. "Ayad brings you into conversations that we are afraid to have- that are really dangerous, not only technological ones, but human ones. I think audiences will be surprised and elevated and challenged by all of the conversations."

Watch in this video as the entire company meets the press and explains more about what the play is all about.