George Clooney has arrived on the New York stage for the first time to unleash an up-to-the-minute, tough-minded, ultimately devastating political rebuke. Not too long ago he told Stephen Colbert that his father, a newsman, advised him no matter whatever he chose to do in life, he must “defend people with less power than you, and go after people with more power than you.”
Pop Clooney would be mighty proud of his son’s Good Night, and Good Luck, which Clooney wrote with Grant Heslov and in which he appears as highly regarded television mainstay Edward R. Murrow. It’s a theater piece adapted from his and Heslov’s 2005 film, but it is and isn’t a strict adaptation.
Again set in a Grand Central CBS studio and adjacent offices (a meticulous Scott Pask set), its immediate concentration is on Murrow’s relentless hounding of—as he repeatedly identifies his target—“the junior senator from Wisconsin.” It’s an accurate designation, of course, that eventually gets him in trouble with controversy-and-ratings-concerned CBS head William S. Paley (Paul Gross).
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Throughout, Clooney and Heslov incorporate footage of McCarthy, including his 1954 appearance on Murrow’s weaponized See It Now, but no live McCarthy stand-in shows up, nor do other film inclusions, such as the suggestion that Murrow go after Joe Kennedy as a break from McCarthy. (Footage of hearing ringmaster Joseph Welch asking McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency?” isn’t neglected.)
But much as Clooney wants to refresh memories—or present the brutal American history chapter to later generations—he has another, more immediate goal in mind. At a tumultuous time when the word “unprecedented’ is tossed around like a frisbee, Clooney and Heslov are hellbent on making certain today’s audiences know that not so very long ago there was a previous influential precedent-setter. (In one footage strip, Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s calculating aide and later Trump’s mentor, can be spotted.)
And here’s a terrific precedent-setter example: Following McCarthy’s See It Now rant, during which, among other inflammatory remarks, he reports Murrow’s membership in the Communist organization International Workers of the World, Murrow offers his fact-checking response. One significant correction: his never being an IWW member.
Moreover, he says in part: “Since [McCarthy] made no reference to statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he proved again that anyone who exposes him, anyone who does not share his hysterical disregard to decency and human dignity and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution must be either a Communist or a fellow traveler. I fully expected this treatment.”
It should be needless to mention that the sequence parallels the fact-checking festivals jubilating whenever Donald Trump indulges himself in this or that fact-dubious rambling.
Another way of describing the Clooney-Heslov Good Night, and Good Luck strategy is its use as a metaphor for the Trump era. Perhaps 40 minutes into the work, the audience is aware of which American event is being relived but also fully aware of what’s being implied about the troubled present. Auditorium-wide guffaws and grateful applause accumulate. (The only current reference missing are the words “fake news.”)
Due to the cameras on the set, Good Night, and Good Luck—the phrase is Murrow’s signature send-off—the production takes on the feel of a documentary. Surely, this is intended: to capture the goings-on behind the scenes of a major television news program. Internal activities are watched, not least the problems presented as increasingly Murrow’s McCarthy hunt plagues the network. In other prominent complications, a supposed secret inter-office marriage (everybody knows) between busy staffers Joe Wershba (Carter Hudson) and Shirley Wershba (Ilana Glazer) hits the rocks.
In an upper stage-left space is a studio room where four musicians and singer Ella (the mellifluous Georgia Heers) stand in for Dianne Reeves and the musicians who participated in the film. They’re heard between scenes and sometimes underscoring them. The reason for their presence: attributing a period-music flavor to the enterprise.
The many actors, directed by the ubiquitous and always scrupulous David Cromer, are more than proficient at their urgent comings-and-goings (Neal Gupta is credited as associate director). But this is Clooney’s show, and perhaps because this is a NYC bow, he has decided not to challenge himself with running an A-to-Z emotional gamut.
More likely, he’s chosen to hew closely to Murrow—always with a lighted cigarette at hand—strictly under the tense McCarthy circumstances. Clooney’s Murrow is a calming, determined influence. At one giveaway moment when smiling at the end of a broadcast, Murrow knows the cameras have gone off him and instantly loses the smile. Cue: big audience laugh. N.B.: Clooney does not imitate Murrow’s distinctive low-register voice.
Clooney in black tie begins and ends Good Night, and Good Light, addressing the crowd at an unspecified banquet. He’s bent on issuing a visionary warning about what the future might hold. The closing part of the prescient-as-all-get-out talk follows a montage (David Bengali, the projections designer) that features—among myriad split-second images—Kellyanne Conway plugging alternative facts and Elon Musk gleefully rendering his Nazi-like salute.
How powerful is Good Night, and Good Luck? This powerful: Whatever law firm out there listing George Clooney as a client now (or at one time) is well advised to brace for legal pursuit.
Good Night and Good Luck opened April 3, 2025 at the Winter Garden Theatre and runs through June 8. Tickets and information: goodnightgoodluckbroadway.com
