<\/p>\n
\n\tLate in the action of Good Night, and Good Luck<\/em>, Clark Gregg<\/a> \u2014 in a moving performance as CBS newscaster Don Hollenbeck, banged up by his recent divorce and a persistent smear campaign branding him as a \u201cpinko\u201d \u2014 makes the melancholy observation: \u201cI wake up in the morning, and I don\u2019t recognize anything. I feel like I went to sleep three years ago, and somebody hijacked \u2026 as if all reasonable people took a plane to Europe and left us behind.\u201d You know you\u2019re in a New York City audience in 2025 when those words are followed by showstopping applause.<\/p>\n \n\tWhatever gains are made in reworking George Clooney<\/a>\u2019s terrific 2005 feature<\/a> of the same name \u2014 his second outing as director and still his best \u2014 for the stage, the material\u2019s timeliness packs a wallop. When the movie was released, questions of media responsibility and freedom to voice political dissent were already pertinent to the national discourse. Two decades later, they have taken on vital importance that makes the drama land with reinforced urgency \u2014 even if the play itself is a flawed vehicle.<\/p>\n \n\tClooney and co-writer Grant Heslov<\/a> have adapted their screenplay about CBS news veteran Edward R. Murrow<\/a>\u2019s contribution to bringing down Senator Joseph McCarthy as a cautionary civics lesson that doubles as a love letter to the bustle of the newsroom in the early days of American live television.<\/p>\n \n\tIf the drama at times seems almost as educational as it is theatrical, David Cromer\u2019s deluxe production remains classy, absorbing entertainment. It conjures the professional milieu with evocative detail and captures the grit and backbone of a news team at a time before the major networks lost their exclusivity with the fragmentation of the information landscape.<\/p>\n \n\tCable news outlets that are unapologetic in their leanings, both right and left, started that shift. But social media platforms and podcasts have consolidated a culture in which Americans can choose to receive only news that echoes their own views, blocking out the rest. Misinformation from both sides gets parroted to the point where it\u2019s accepted as fact. Where, Good Night, and Good Luck<\/em> asks implicitly, do people go now for voices of unbiased integrity? Who are the Ed Murrows of today?<\/p>\n \n\tIn the film, Clooney played Fred W. Friendly, the writer-producer of Murrow\u2019s weekly primetime newsmagazine, See It Now<\/em>. Starting in March 1954, the program helped shift public opinion on McCarthy\u2019s anti-communist witch hunt, and the character assassination tactics of the man himself, which encroached on basic American freedoms.<\/p>\n \n\tThe long campaign of \u201cthe junior senator from Wisconsin\u201d \u2014 as Murrow keeps referring to him with wry condescension \u2014 to whip up Red Scare hysteria was in large part built on lies, bullying and discrediting anyone who questioned his methods as a traitor. Hmm, sounds familiar.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile he was part of a tight onscreen ensemble rather than giving a star turn, Clooney\u2019s natural warmth and charisma effectively counterbalanced the reserve \u2014 the mix of matter-of-fact directness and solemnity \u2014 of a never-better David Strathairn\u2019s riveting Murrow. Switching to that role on stage, Clooney leans hard into the gravitas with a constantly furrowed brow, tamping down his movie-star magnetism in a vanity-free performance. It\u2019s a creditable Broadway<\/a> debut (Clooney last acted onstage in 1986), though perhaps a touch too muted to give the play the dynamic center it needs.<\/p>\n \n\tThat issue is compounded by the casting of Friendly. Glenn Fleshler is an accomplished stage actor and a better match physically for the real Fred Friendly than Clooney was. But he\u2019s a stolid presence here, playing a character who seems to have lost dimensionality in the translation from screen to stage.<\/p>\n \n\tThe device that really does work, as it did in the movie, is having McCarthy play himself in archival footage, both from the Senate hearings he conducted and his response to Murrow\u2019s report, which was broadcast on See It Now<\/em>, allowing no time for rebuttal until the following week\u2019s show. Those clips are projected on various screens around designer Scott Pask\u2019s atmospheric CBS studio set, along with \u201850s-style black-and-white televisions that flank the Winter Garden Theatre\u2019s wide proscenium.<\/p>\n \n\tThe other element carried over from the movie is musical interludes. Songs from the era are performed here by the CBS in-house band on an elevated platform, with luscious jazz vocals by Georgia Heers, who opens the show with \u201cWhen I Fall in Love.\u201d One or two of the numbers \u2014 Cole Porter\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ve Got My Eyes on You,\u201d Irving Berlin\u2019s \u201cLet\u2019s Face the Music and Dance\u201d \u2014 could be interpreted as oblique reflections of the plot, but mostly they just serve as period embellishment. It\u2019s a pleasure to hear them but they also slow down a play that could use more consistent dramatic momentum.<\/p>\n