PREVIEW: “Good Night, and Good Luck” at the Winter Garden Theater
Playbill cover of Good Luck and Good Night, courtesy Tonic Marketing. Photo by Emilio Madrid.
PREVIEW
Good Night, and Good Luck
Winter Garden Theater
1634 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
March 13—June 8, 2025
By Michael Workman
It wasn't the record-breaking season on Broadway that drew me out for George Clooney's outing in the stage adaptation of his 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck. I didn’t intend to write about, but felt gravitationally moved to do so. I should state up-front that it’s based on a preview performance I attended on Saturday, March 29, ahead of the show’s official slated opening night on April 3. So, as is standard with previews, some tiny production polishes are still evolving, though the core performances and direction are largely in place.
It’s already a hit, of course, as has been widely reported. Broadway in general is having an over-the-top moment, with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal headlining their own record-breaking run of Othello at the Ethel Barrymore, and Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKean and Bill Burr in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Palace Theater. So much celebrity yottawattage! Out of all of these, however, I couldn't help but be drawn to the play written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, and directed by David Cromer, telling the story as it does of Edward R. Murrow’s reporting from the heart of the Red Scare, and his transformative tangles with Joseph McCarthy, “the junior senator from Wisconsin.” It stands as one of the most significant markers in my field of study; McCarthyism, after all, fundamentally reshaped the profession of journalism. Those old principles about objective fact, once a cherished guardrail principle and guiding beacon for anyone who cared to call themselves a serious reporter, failed during this era in a way that helped support the Red Scare tactics and necessitated, post-McCarthyism, a shift in journalism to not only writing about the facts of what happened, but also the embrace of a new, important, and world-changing necessity to cover political thought.
The new, evaluative approach to journalism that emerged wasn’t the source of the weaponization of evolving media to mislead, misinform and delude the public (or of the role of a journalism with integrity’s mandate to check it), no—throughout history, mass media innovations have played an integral role in shaping both cultural production and public perception, often aligning with—or resisting—political forces. As new technologies emerge, those who work in media have always had to scramble to adapt their professions to the changing ways those technologies have not just offered new pathways for delivering it to audiences, but also to thoughtfully ward against the ways it has perniciously been used to mediate that communication as well.
Nazism would no doubt have been nowhere near as effective without the rise of radio, for example, to connect enclaves of Germans, deep in the grip of despair and disaffection stemming from Germany’s defeat in World War I, the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, economic collapse during hyperinflation and the Great Depression, and widespread political instability under the Weimar Republic. These conditions, combined with cultural anxiety and effective Nazi propaganda, created a fertile ground for an authoritarian social imaginary and nationalist revival. "It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio...” opined propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. “It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio." To help fan the flames of Nazism, the government of the Third Reich even created special programs to promote the production and distribution of affordable radios, known as the Volksempfänger or the "People's Receiver," to ensure widespread access to broadcasts.
Edward R. Murrow first rose to prominence through his own radio broadcasts from London during the Blitz (1940–1941), earning international acclaim for his calm, clear-eyed reporting amid nightly German air raids. Speaking from rooftops and bomb-threatened studios, he brought the war home to American audiences with unprecedented immediacy. In April 1945, Murrow accompanied Allied forces into the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. His April 15 radio report stunned listeners with its graphic yet deeply humane account of the atrocities he witnessed firsthand. His words—measured but emotionally searing—marked a watershed moment in broadcast journalism, demonstrating radio’s power not only to inform but to bear witness and assert moral clarity in moments of profound crisis.
This same insistence on moral clarity later defined Murrow’s confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Murrow allowed McCarthy to condemn himself in the court of public opinion—largely by airing the senator’s own words. Yet Murrow’s critique was rooted in a much broader historical background. The racial paranoia that fueled McCarthy’s red-baiting echoed an older American legacy: the so-called "one-drop" laws, which codified racial identity and upheld segregation through even the faintest trace of Black ancestry. These American legal frameworks were not lost on the international stage. When Nazi jurists drafted the Nuremberg Laws in the 1930s, they explicitly looked to U.S. race laws for inspiration—though, disturbingly, some even found them too extreme. Still, they borrowed heavily from American precedents to shape their own “blood purity” statutes, translating the racialized ideology of Mein Kampf into policy.
In this context, Murrow’s resistance to McCarthy was not just a journalistic stand—it was a defense of democratic integrity against a homegrown tradition of fear-based governance. Murrow’s legacy set the standard for a lineage of journalists who would later meet similarly shattering moments with clarity and composure. Walter Cronkite, voice trembling, was the first to confirm President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. Peter Jennings, broadcasting live for over 17 consecutive hours on September 11, 2001, became a steady, empathetic presence for millions as the attacks unfolded. Christiane Amanpour’s wartime reporting from Sarajevo and Baghdad, and Anderson Cooper’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, brought raw emotion and accountability to screens where bureaucratic detachment might have otherwise reigned.
These journalists—like Murrow before them—stood at the edge of chaos, sometimes physically, often emotionally, and delivered something closer to moral clarity than mere commentary. They didn’t just report history. They helped shape our collective response to it.
Cast photo for Good Luck and Good Night, courtesy Tonic Marketing. Photo by Emilio Madrid.
I present all this, of course, as stage-setting for discussion of Clooney’s depiction of Murrow, which should be helped along in continuing to succeed in being seen as much as possible, not least of all in part because we as a nation seem to have forgotten the lessons it contains. For the actor, the choice to reimagine this Murrow story is one in line with his longtime affinity for portraying morally complex or principled figures caught in the machinery of power, politics, or media. I can’t help but think of Syriana (2005), where he played a disillusioned CIA operative grappling with the moral cost of American foreign policy—or Michael Clayton (2007), in which he portrayed a corporate fixer facing an ethical reckoning. Across his career—as actor, director, and producer—Clooney has gravitated toward roles that explore the tension between idealism and realpolitik, and those very human characters forced to make conscience-driven decisions under immense pressure.
His Broadway depiction of Murrow fits squarely into this lineage: Clooney’s furrowed brow bears the strain of a man confronting the bête noire of American illiberalism—the authoritarian undercurrent that has long shadowed the nation’s democratic ideals. As the play makes clear, that confrontation came at a cost: Murrow and his team became targets of McCarthy and his red-baiting proxies. For Clooney, the resonance with 1950s Hollywood must be unmistakable, when figures like John Wayne helped lead the counter-assault on perceived leftist influence in media and entertainment. As a prominent member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, Wayne was an outspoken critic of the Hollywood Ten—screenwriters and directors who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947—and of others who resisted the tide of McCarthyism. In doing so, he helped enforce a cultural blacklist that silenced dissent and destroyed careers.
The pressure on Murrow’s team at CBS echoed the experiences of many other cultural figures caught in the crosshairs of anti-communist paranoia: playwrights like Arthur Miller, who was hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name names; performers like Paul Robeson and Lena Horne, whose activism made them targets; screenwriters like Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted as part of the Ten; and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, who, though never a member of the Communist Party, was hounded by the FBI for his outspoken leftist views and ultimately exiled from the United States when his re-entry permit was revoked in 1952.
The pressure on Murrow’s team at CBS revealed not only the external threat of anti-communist paranoia, but also the internal tensions that McCarthy and his allies skillfully exploited—namely, the uneasy balance between commercial imperatives and journalistic integrity. The production underscores this conflict with pointed irony: vintage commercials for hand soap and hair cream are interspersed throughout, humorously yet incisively highlighting the absurd juxtaposition between hard-hitting journalism and the network’s dependence on advertising dollars.
While Murrow stood firmly for truth and accountability, his position within a corporate media structure made that stance perilous. Executives at CBS, including his boss William S. Paley—portrayed in the Broadway production by Peter Gerety—were deeply uneasy about the potential backlash, both political and financial, that Murrow’s broadcasts might provoke. The network, dependent on advertisers and wary of government scrutiny, increasingly viewed Murrow’s principled reporting as a liability. This placed Murrow in the difficult position of having to defend not only his editorial decisions, but the very role of journalism in a democratic society, even as the institution he worked for leaned toward self-preservation over public service.
In his See It Now broadcast of March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy directly, challenging not only the senator’s tactics but also the public’s complicity in allowing them to thrive—a complicity that echoed political theorist Hannah Arendt’s later concept of the banality of evil. Writing in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Arendt observed how ordinary individuals, through thoughtless adherence to authority and routine, became agents of systemic violence. Murrow’s critique similarly underscored how democratic erosion doesn’t require mass conspiracy—just widespread indifference (the kind of indifference, say that delivered Trump 49.8% of the popular vote, or approximately 77.3 million votes out of roughly 155.2 million). By quoting Julius Caesar—“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”—Murrow rejected the idea that authoritarianism, fear, or political repression were the products of fate. Instead, he placed responsibility squarely on citizens, institutions, and the press, reminding viewers that such threats endure not because they are inevitable, but because they are tolerated. Clooney’s performance channels that legacy, placing Murrow’s persona—calm, principled, unshakable—in the path of power run amok.
A key figure in holding that line with Murrow was Fred Friendly, portrayed in the production by Glenn Fleshler. As Murrow’s producer and co-creator of See It Now, Friendly worked behind the scenes to shape the broadcasts, secure airtime, and navigate the network’s shifting political and commercial pressures. It was Friendly who helped Murrow craft the meticulous case against McCarthy using only the senator’s own words—letting the danger speak for itself. Their collaboration was rooted in shared convictions about the press’s responsibility to challenge power, even when doing so threatened careers. Fleshler portrays Friendly’s quiet resolve and loyalty to principle like a steady force of nature, making him one of the play’s most understated yet indispensable presences among the many cast members who move with choreographed effortlessness around the incredible stage clockwork of Murrow’s newsroom.
That clockwork is made literal in the production’s physical staging. The set, designed by Michael Yeargan, is a marvel of seamless transformation: a constantly shifting environment that moves fluidly between the CBS newsroom, the See It Now broadcast stage, and other locations, often in the same breath. Nearly the entirety of stage left glides in and out with cinematic precision, reinforcing the high-stakes urgency of live television and the whiplash pace of a media landscape under siege. These transitions are illuminated and shaped by the lighting design of David Lander, whose divine spots and moody, intense period glows not only differentiate time and place, but also mirror the moral duress of the story. The combined effect ensures the audience never forgets the constructed nature of both television and power—and how easily the lines between truth, performance, and spectacle can blur.
Ella, portrayed by Georgia Heers, opens the play and serves as a kind of emotional and atmospheric anchor—a presence that bridges the world of the newsroom with the cultural mood of the era. Though not a historical figure tied directly to Murrow’s CBS team, she is a fictional composite inspired by the jazz singers of the 1950s, evoking figures like Ella Fitzgerald, whose voice defined the soundscape of mid-century America. Her performances—interspersed throughout the play—do more than provide musical interludes. They function as commentary and counterpoint, echoing the emotional undercurrents of the scenes around them.
The winkingly ever-affable Clark Gregg portrays Don Hollenbeck, a CBS News journalist and close colleague of Edward R. Murrow. A real-life figure, Hollenbeck was known for his principled reporting during the early 1950s. Labeled a “pinko” by right-wing media outlets, he endured relentless public scrutiny and personal attacks—most notably from columnist Jack O’Brian, a staunch McCarthy ally. The play captures the emotional toll this campaign took on Hollenbeck, and features a particularly poignant exchange with Murrow that reveals the quiet warmth and mutual respect between the two men. Though they may have held differing political views, the scene underscores their shared commitment to journalistic integrity and their ability to honor each other’s humanity in a time of deep ideological division.
Also depicted in the Broadway production of Good Night, and Good Luck are Joe and Shirley Wershba, both journalists at CBS News who were secretly married at the time—a fact they concealed due to CBS policy prohibiting married couples from working together. In the stage version, they are portrayed by Carter Hudson and Ilana Glazer, whose performances underscore both the human costs of institutional pressures and the subtler, internalized surveillance of the era. In real life, the Wershbas continued their careers in journalism after the McCarthy period subsided. Joe went on to become a senior producer for 60 Minutes, and Shirley produced documentaries for PBS, both contributing meaningfully to American broadcast journalism until their respective retirements.
Background photo for the marquee image of Good Luck and Good Night, courtesy Tonic Marketing. Photo by Emilio Madrid.
A particularly poignant moment in the play comes when the Senate, after years of silence in the face of unchecked demagoguery, finally takes decisive action to end McCarthy’s reign. The turning point came during the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings in the spring of 1954, when Joseph Welch, chief counsel for the U.S. Army, famously confronted the senator with the now-legendary rebuke: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” The moment stunned the nation, exposing McCarthy’s bullying and fear-mongering for what it was. Public support quickly began to erode. In December of that year, McCarthy was formally censured by the United States Senate in a 67–22 vote—a rare and serious reprimand that effectively stripped him of political power and public credibility. Though he remained in office until his death in 1957, the censure marked the collapse of his influence and a crucial turning point in the nation's reckoning with McCarthyism.
While the staff at CBS celebrates during the Senate’s censure of McCarthy onstage, Clooney’s Murrow is quietly handed a note informing him of Hollenbeck’s tragic suicide in 1954, driven by the relentless pressure and reputational damage he had endured. The moment lands like a system shock: Murrow covers his face with his hands, the emotional toll of the era crashing down with devastating clarity. The celebratory mood vanishes. In the Winter Garden, a heavy silence falls—sobs and choked breaths rising from the audience, mine included, could be heard as the staff on stage stood frozen in collective mourning. The cost, suddenly, is no longer abstract. It is personal, irreversible, and unbearably high.
On some level then it comes as no surprise that Good Night, and Good Luck should be breaking Broadway records. Theater has long served as a cultural mirror, a forum in which society confronts itself—and in politically volatile times when the opposition party seems unbearably silent, the stage becomes an especially potent site for public reckoning. From Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a searing allegory for McCarthyism, to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, which placed Roy Cohn—McCarthy’s ruthless chief counsel and a key architect of the Red Scare—under the spotlight of moral inquiry, American theater has consistently mined national crises for their emotional and ideological truths.Good Night, and Good Luck continues this tradition, not simply rehashing the past, but dramatizing the mechanics of moral resistance, truth-telling, and the high stakes of journalism in an age of manufactured doubt.
At a moment when we are once again living under a Trump administration, we find ourselves inheriting the unresolved political legacies of McCarthyism and the authoritarian strongmen it enabled. Roy Cohn—McCarthy’s infamous chief counsel and architect of the Red Scare—later became Trump’s personal mentor, instilling in him a combative, media-savvy style of politics rooted in intimidation, denial, and spectacle. That lineage has only intensified in the current climate. In Trump’s second term, the tools of fear and division have been rebranded and amplified. With advisors like Steve Bannon—who has openly championed nationalist movements and information warfare—the administration has doubled down on media manipulation, institutional erosion, and ideological scapegoating. Protesters have been detained without warning by unidentified federal agents in major cities; migrants and asylum seekers have been relocated to offshore facilities or deported under sweeping, opaque policies; and dissent is increasingly framed not as a democratic right but as a threat to national order. These are not isolated incidents—they are part of a broader pattern that echoes the playbook of previous strongmen, updated for a new era of algorithmic propaganda and political theater. The new era of an entirely new broadcast technology in the form of social media.
In this context, Good Night, and Good Luck offers more than historical reflection—it becomes a civic intervention. The world it depicts is not safely behind us, but unfolding around us. Its warning is clear: authoritarianism doesn't arrive all at once. It creeps in through silence, complicity, and the normalization of cruelty disguised as strength—and the production frames this all too poignantly throughout, interspersed with historical clips that give us the testament of the people themselves, both McCarthy and his victims, in their own words. These clips don't merely illustrate the period—they lead us to the possibilities of our own implications in its aftermath.
The production builds to a powerful crescendo with Clooney, standing at a podium, as he delivers a closing reflection that functions as a practicum on the play’s themes. Clooney’s Murrow holds fast the scenery a moment and asks, directly and without illusion, “What will you do?” No one responds—of course, it’s a play—but the stillness in the theater becomes part of the moment. Asked directly of the audience, in the moment I imagine us all screaming out in unison “Fight!” but then, as the moment passes, he again delivers the Shakespearean line—not with resignation, but as a challenge. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” This time, the line is not just rhetorical—it feels like a charge, aimed squarely at the audience to follow through on that unspoken response.
The founders of the American experiment never imagined the people were infallible. They understood the human tendency toward error, fear, and ambition. But they also believed in the people’s capacity to recognize their own flaws, to learn from their failures, and to correct course—to strive toward that aspirational phrase in the Constitution: a more perfect union. In invoking that lineage, the play does more than dramatize history. It calls on us to live up to it. While writing this, I can’t help but replay that image in my head as Clooney’s Murrow stands silently, before a giant screen, as a stark, rapid-fire video montage plays out tracing the ripple effects of McCarthy-era paranoia through successive generations. We see the evolution of recent American history play out—Fox News, CNN, and others, the Challenger explosion, the Cold War—alongside presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and others, culminating in a jarring final image: Elon Musk’s now-infamous Nazi salute. The implication is clear—the ripples haven’t stopped. They’re here to stay, and in our current American moment, gathering force.
Michael Workman is the Editor-in-Chief of Bridge.
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