When “good night and good luck” this spring arrived at Broadway, initially caused a surprising amount of cynicism. There were complaints that the adaptation of George Clooney and Grant Heslov was basically a reproduction of the 2005 film, which reported the Cruzada heroic of the journalist of CBS Edward R. Murrow against the fighters of communist witches of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The cost of tickets was another source of criticism. Was Broadway price out of reach of your main audience? The “Good Night and Good Luck” reports broke box office records served to remember those who could not pay a ticket that were being left behind by a theatrical culture that was reviewing those who have those who do not have.
In a Broadway season that had Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in an “Othhello” without rudder and Kieran Culkin in a rebirth of “Glengarry Glen Ross” that could have been stronger without him, “good night and good luck” was a convenient goal for the anti-Hollywood feeling.
When I arrived in the winter garden for a Matiné on Saturday in April, I cannot say that my expectations were especially high. I admired the movie but I hadn't seen it in almost 20 years. The melancholic production, sharply directed by David Cromer and starring a silence in silence in the role of Murrow (played in the film by David Strathairn), it was not only one of the most moving offers of the Broadway season, but also one of the most necessary.
I left the theater wishing to buy tickets for my friends and family. That will not be necessary, fortunately for my credit cards, because CNN will broadcast a live presentation of “good night and good luck” of the Winter Garden on Saturday. Apparently, it is the first time that a live Broadway work is shown on television, and the moment could not be better.
As media companies face an intimidation campaign of the Trump administration, the figure of Murrow, which remains high in front of demagogic adversity, is the brave example we need at this time.
I don't know how different the experience at home will be looking at, but “good night and good luck” they made me reflect on how the theater could have been in ancient Greece. Athenian citizens would meet in an outdoor theater as democratic privilege and responsibility. The playwrights approached the polis not dramatizing the current events, but by recasting the tales of the mythological and historical past to sharpen critical thinking about contemporary concerns.
Clooney and Heslov do not write dramatic poetry. Its most direct approach is closer to documentary drama, but the effect is not so disparate. We are affirmed to know that we are the political body.
CNN will transmit the penultimate performance of “Good Night and Good Luck” on the eve of the Tony Awards. Production has increased for five tonys, including one for Clooney in the main performance of an actor in a work category. But nevertheless, the awards shake, Clooney is already a winner. Like Murrow, he reminds us that consciousness can still be a defining characteristic of the American character.
