There are moments in Good Night, and Good Luck, the new play by George Clooney and Grant Heslov opening on Broadway tonight at the Winter Garden Theatre and starring Clooney as pioneering TV journalist Edward R. Murrow, when the anti-authoritarian passion of all three men are made very clear. Anti-McCarthyism in Murrow’s case, anti-Trumpism for Clooney and, one presumes, Heslow. Unfortunately, more often than not, that clarity comes through speechifying, minor-key tirades and copious use of ’50s-era TV clips that make plain the all-too-obvious parallels between then and now.
We know when, in history and in the play, the inevitable “Have you no sense of decency?” will arrive to put Senator Joseph McCarthy out of America’s misery. When, the play not so subtly wonders, will Donald Trump face the same path?
Making clear-as-day the similarities between those long ago days of McCarthyite propaganda and today’s Trumpian “alternative facts,” not to mention a news media that’s often either too cowed or too overwhelmed to call a lie a lie, Good Night, and Good Luck is too knowing or too winking by half to seem like anything other than rather uninspired agitprop.
Based very closely on the 2005 film of the same name, also written by Clooney and Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck certainly doesn’t lack point of view or conviction, but neither of those things can do much with an overly familiar story, a lack of subtlety and an odd tone of understatement that extends to everything from the writing to Clooney’s performance. The actor seems to be fighting against the natural charisma that has played such an important role in energizing his film and TV performances.
Clooney somehow seems smaller, more contained than he does even on smaller, more contained screens. His acting chops aren’t in question – he’s never anything less than solid in that department, and same goes for his showing here – but one has to question why Clooney (and his director, David Cromer) would choose to make his Broadway debut in a production that, justifiably if disappointingly, makes so much use of large video panels that repeatedly show the actor-as-Murrow in close-up black-and-white and speaking the stilted, ’50s-era newsman style that gives Good Night, And Good Luck a been-there-done-that mood.
Compare, for example, the riveting and energetic performance being given by Jake Gyllenhaal down the road in Broadway’s modern-dress Othello, or Sarah Snook’s amazing performance as Oscar Wilde in The Picture Of Dorian Gray, a production where the brilliantly colorful and playful, state-of-the-art screens and projections can’t help but make Good Night‘s forays onto Ivo van Hove turf seem downright uninspired.
The good news here is that the large cast – Clooney most definitely included – offer up rock-solid performances even though they, like Clooney’s outsize charm, too often get swallowed up in Scott Pask’s large, busy TV studio set design. Pask, like video/projection designer David Bengali and director Cromer are among Broadway’s elite, most dependable creative teams, but even they seem undone by a plodding play that truly comes alive in fits and spurts. Among the highlights: Murrow’s battles with William F. Paley (Paul Gross), a few lighter moments between the secretly married working couple Shirley and Joe Wershba (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson), and, most especially, Clooney’s taken-from-history speeches that Murrow delivered years after the Army-McCarthy hearings, and that bookend this play.
Just before that final bookend, Good Night,and Good Luck deploys that big video screen for one modernizing touch, with a rapid-fire, chronological video montage of clips from Milton Berle, I Love Lucy, Cronkite’s tearful announcement of the JFK assassination and right up to today’s conflation of entertainment and journalism a la Tucker Carlson. The montage ends on a final clip that draws gasps from the audience, so recent and disturbing is it. No spoilers except to say it is one of the more shocking and famous images of that Tesla guy.
And yet there’s still nothing in the well-meaning Good Night, and Good Luck (that, of course, was Murrow’s nightly sign-off phrase) that delivers its messages with more precision and impact than that 71-year-old bit of scratchy footage of attorney Joseph Welch sending McCarthy off to the dustbin with “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?” The play lets old Welch, up there so familiarly on screen, do the heavy lifting.
Title: Good Night, and Good LuckVenue: Broadway’s Winter Garden TheatreDirector: David CromerWritten by: George Clooney and Grant HeslovCast: George Clooney, Mac Brandt, Will Dagger, Christopher Denham, Glenn Fleshler, Ilana Glazer, Clark Gregg, Paul Gross, Georgia Heers, Carter Hudson, Fran Kranz, Jennifer Morris, Michael Nathanson, Andrew Polk, Aaron Roman Weiner with R. Ward Duffy, Joe Forbrich, Imani Rousselle, Greg Stuhr, JD Taylor, Sophia TzougrosRunning time: 1 hr 40 min (no intermission)
