“Late in the action of good night, and good luck, Clark Gregg – in a moving performance as CBs Newscaster Don Hollenbeck, Banged Up By His Recent Divorce and A Persent Satent Smear Campa. melancholy Observation: “I Wake up in the Morning, and I DON’T RECOGNIZE Anything. I”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
Whatever Gains are Made in Reworking George Clooney’s Terrific 2005 Feature of the Same Name – His Second Outing As Director and Still His Best – For The Stage, The Matereal’s Timelindness Packs. WHEN The MOVIE WAS RELEASED, QUESTIONS OF MEDIA Resposition 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 – Even IF The Play Ittself is a Flawed Vehicle.
Clooney and CO-Writer Grant Heslov Have Adapted Their Screenplay about CBS News Veteran Edward Love Letter to the Bustle of the Newsroom in the Early Days of American Live Television.
If the Drama at Times Sems Almost As Education As It Is Theatrical, David Cromer’s Deluxe Production Remains Classy, Absorbing Entertainment. IT confessional Milieu with Evocative Detail and Captures the Grit and Backbone of a News Team at A Time Before The Major Networks Lost Their Exclusiveness of the FRAGRAGAGE WITH THE FRAGARAG.
Cable News Outletts That Are Unpologetic in Their Leanings, Both Right and Left, Started that Shift. But Social Media Platforms and PodCasts have Consolidated A Culture in Whole Americans Can Choose to Receive Only News That Echoes Their Own Views, Blocking Out. MISINFORMATION FROM BOTH SIDES GETS PARRROTED TO THE POINT WHERE IS ACCEPTED AS FACT. WHERE, Good Night, and Good Luck Asks Implicitly, Do People Go Now for Voices of Unbiased Integrity? Who are the ed murrows of today?
In the Film, Clooney Played Fred W. Friendly, The Writer-Producer of Murrow’s Weekly Primetime Newsmagazine, See It Now. Starting in March 1954, The Program Helped Shift Public Opinion on McCarthy’s Anti-Communist Witch Hunt, and The Character Assassination Tactics of the Man HimSELF, WHICH ENCROCHED ON.
The Long Campaign of “The Junior Senor Senator from Wisconsin” – as Murrow Keeps Referring to Him with Wry CondesceCenscision – To Wing Up Up The Red Scare Hysteria Was in An, Bilge Part Bilge Part Bilge Part Bilge Part Buil, Billya Disa. Who questioned his Methods as a tractor. HMM, Sounds Familiar.
While He Was Part of a Tight OnScreen Ensemble Racher than Giving A Star Turn, Clooney’s Natural Warmth and Charisma Effectielyetebalanted The Reserve-The Mix of Matter-of of a Never-Better David Strathairn’s 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-Freee Performance. IT’s a Creditable Broadway Debut (Clooney Last Actage In 1986), Thought Perhaps a Touch Touch Too Muted To Give the Dynamic Center Iteds.
That isssue is compoined 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’s A Stolid Presence Here, Playing A Character Whoms to Have Lost Dimensionality in the Translation from Screen to Stage.
The device that really does work, as it did Did in the movie, is having McCarthy Play HIMSELF in Archival Footage, Both from The Senate Hearings heocon. See It NowAllowing No Time for Rebuttal Until The Following Week’s Show. TOSE Clips Are Projected On Various Screens AROUND Designer Scott Pask’s Atmosphere CBS Studio Set, Along with ’50s-Style Black-and-Hoesede
The 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. One or Two of the Numbers – Cole Porter’s “I’V Got My eyes on You,“ Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face The Music and Dance” Embellishment. I a pleasure to hear them but they also slaw Down a Play that Could Use More Consistent Dramatic Momentum.
That’s Partly Due to Murrow Being The Only Character Whoms Fully Fleshed Out. A Subplot Involving NewsRoom Staffers Shirley and Joe Wershba (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson), Whose Secret Maraget Is Against CBS Rules, Never Catches Much Heat, Evener Affecting Moments.
The Same Roles Played by Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. in the Movie Felt More Essential in Establishing Just How Much Tension and Paranoia Were in the Studio, AS IF The Air Was Poisoned by the Fearmongering of McCarthyism. Shirley and Joe’s Scenes on Stage Are Among Several Pointing Up The NAGING SENSE THAT THAT MATERIAL PLAYED BETTER IN CLESEUP.
Clooney Gets Those Closeups Via A Live Camera Feed That Sprlashes Murrow’s BroadCasts Up on a Screen. With his salt-And-pepper hair dyed black and the every-present cigarette in his HIS HIS HIS HIS Trailing Smoke Even while Notes to English Directly with Viewers at Home.
TOSE ON-CAMERA SCENES ALSO ALLOW CLOONEY A WELCOME MOMENT OF HUMOR as Murrow Wraps Up A Fluffy Interview with Liberace, One of the One of the One Person to Person Celebrity Chats He Was Required by the Network to do in Exchange for Editorial Freedom On the News Side. WHEN MURROW SIGNS OFF AND THE CAMERAMAN SAYS, “Good Show, Ed,” HIS FORCED AIRTIME SMILE COLLPSES INSTANTLY INTO A SCOWL.
There’s Strong Rapport in Clooney’s Scenes with Both Allies and Those Around Whom Murrow Needs to Step Carefully, Nobly Greg’s Hollenbeck in the Former Camp and The Paur.
The essence of Soft-Spoken Patrician Command in His Impeccably Tailored Pinstripe Suit, Gross (Slings & Arrows) Makes Network Chief Paley not a Corporate Overlord But a Principled Man Who Respects What Murrow DOES AND HONORS HIS PROMISE TO STAY OUT of the News Team’s Business. But He’s Also Alert to the Bottom Line, Become Less Agreeable As Murrow’s Antagonism of McCarthy Jeopardizes An Important Sponsor Relationship and Puts The Network Increasing.
The Play Is Bookeded by Murrow’s Speech at the 1958 Radio and Television News Directors Association Annual Meeting, Read by Clooney at A Podium. His Subject Is The Cause for Concern as Media Abandons Its Mission to Inform and Illuminate the Public, Institute Just Providing Distraction to Insulate Viewers from Worm What.
“There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be faughht against ignition, Intolerance and Indifferent. Many would argue that challenge of which he speaks was find and lost decades ago. But Murrow Closes by Asking A Question Today More Relevant than Who Ever: “What Are You Prepared to Do?” The Same Applies to A Warning from Earlier in the Same Speech: “Our History Will Be What We Make of It.”
Murrow’s First Broadside Against McCarthyy Is Peppered with Views that Apply Very Much to the America We Now Live in: “We Must Not Confuse Dissent With Disloyalty.” “We Will Not Be Driven by Fear Into An Age of Unreason.”
Even McCarthy’s Own Words, Which Murrow Throws Back at Him to Highlight His Hypocrisy – Warning That A Fight Between America’s Cannot Endure for Long as A One-Party System-Now Seem Eerily Prescient.
Given the Clear Parallels Between the McCarthy Period and the Present Day that Resound Througout the Play, It’s Questionable Will Wheth The Accelerated Montage Recaping the History of Assassination to Unsettling Recent Events – Was Necessary to Hammer Home Its Point. Some Will Call It Heavy-Handed While Other Will Applaud the Lucidity with WHICH IT TRESES A TIMELINE TO WEER WE ARE NOW. The audience at the press performance i caught at it up and could be heard discussing it on the way out. Perhaps It’s Useful to Help Join The Dots?
Irrespective of the strenguths and weaknesses of Good Night, and Good Luck As Theater, The Personal Commitment of Clooney, Whose Father Is A Former Anchorman, Sems Heartfelt and Impassioned. There’s No Doubting the Sincerity of His Belief That This Dark Chapter of American History Has Something Vital to Impart to Us in 2025.
Venue: Winter Garden Theater, New York
Cast: George Clooney, Mac Brandt, Will Dagger, Christopher Denham, Glenn Fleshler, Ilana Glazer, Clark Gregg, Paul Gross, Georgia Heers, Carter Hudson, Fran Kran, Franzon Nathanson, Andrew Polk, Aaron Roman Weiner
Director: David Cromer
Playwrights: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Based on Their Screenplay
Set Designer: Scott Pask
Costume Designer: Brenda Abandandolo
Lighting Designer: Heather Gilbert
Sound Designer: Daniel Kluger
Project Designer: David Bengali
Compositions, Orchestrations, Arrangements & Music Direction: Bryan Carter
Presiented by Seaview, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Smokehouse, Jean Doumanian, Robert Fox, 2929 Entertainment, Participant, Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures