Theatre in Review: Good Night, and Good Luck (Winter Garden Theatre)

	Paul Gross, George Clooney. Photo: Emilio Madrid

Good Night, and Good Luck could hardly have arrived at a more propitious time: What with academic institutions, legal firms, and media outlets all bowing to power in Washington, what better time for the drama of a journalist who risks it all to expose the misdeeds of a lying, headline-grabbing demagogue? That would be the legendary Edward R. Murrow and his tussle with the senator and self-appointed Cold Warrior Joseph McCarthy, shredder of reputations and ruiner of lives. (Among the things McCarthy shares with the White House's current occupant is a close alliance with the reptilian, ever-litigious Roy Cohn, proof that your mother was right when she warned you about bad companions.) The new tenant at the Winter Garden firmly plants itself on the side of the angels; in more than one instance, Murrow's speeches about the clear and present dangers to democracy are met with bursts of applause. Still, the best jeremiads are delivered with urgency; this one is a little stiff around its joints.

I'm beginning to think we need a remedial course in stagecraft, even for some of our most celebrated practitioners. This season, we've had Sunset Boulevard, which subsumes everything to the leading lady and her video screen, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which subsumes the leading lady to a barrage of video screens. Video isn't the problem with Good Night, and Good Luck, at least not centrally; instead, an enormous amount of expertise has been expended in trying to convert the screenplay of the well-regarded 2005 film of the same title into a viable stage play. It's a heavy lift for director David Cromer and his design team; they give it all they've got, but the effort shows. The production has many things going for it, including a legendary movie star buoyed by a supporting cast of top character actors, an authentic look, and an appreciation for the era's festering paranoia: This was a time of loyalty oaths, unsourced allegations, and sudden firings, when a journalist could be smeared as a fellow traveler if his ex-wife had Soviet sympathies.

The play begins on a stylish note with a female jazz singer, glimpsed through a diaphanous curtain, framed in a shaft of downlight, crooning "When I Fall in Love." The producers have sprung for a live musical combo, and the effect is salutary, instantly whisking us back to 1954, when McCarthy's rampage was at its peak. But the singer -- the golden-voiced Georgia Heers -- keeps returning, and it soon becomes obvious she has been engaged to cover the long, lumbering scene changes with which the production is plagued. In its overall dimensions, Scott Pask's newsroom set is a marvel of detail, even making room for a slice of Grand Central Station upstage. But the script consists of many short scenes in different locales, so the action must halt for scenic wagons to roll onstage; at other times, there are lengthy blackouts while portable lighting rigs are installed for, say, an episode of See It Now, Murrow's signature broadcast. Some scenes get caught up in staging snarls. For an episode of See It Now focusing on Milo Radulovich, a serviceman accused of Communist sympathies, we see Murrow downstage, introducing the segment, with the real-life Radulovich on a video screen. (The show makes ample use of footage from CBS broadcasts of the era, and sometimes there's a slight disconnect between live actors talking to video images.) Oddly, the bulk of the interview is handled by the journalist Joseph Wershba, who is barely visible behind the glass wall of an upstage studio. This arrangement lends the scene a weirdly disembodied feeling. Sometimes, Good Night, and Good Luck bombards you with visual information; sometimes, its stage pictures are so complicated you don't know where to look.

The script is similarly fragmented, packed with a multitude of characters, although, oddly, not McCarthy, who is seen only in documentary footage. The focus is entirely on Murrow, his decision to call out the senator on See It Now, which -- despite pushback from right-wing newspapers and an appalling equal-time response from McCarthy that consists of sour insults and sinister insinuations -- can be seen as the beginning of the end for the red-baiting era. Despite the dramatic possibilities, the action throughout is muted, talky, and underplayed to a fault; scenes that might crackle on film feel underpowered onstage. Even when a character, fearing the loss of his career, commits suicide, the incident makes surprisingly little impact.

The tone is struck by Clooney, who, simulating Murrow's cadaverous appearance and monotone manner, comes off as a walking, talking monument. (Murrow hailed from a time when news personalities strove to project an august authority, unlike some of the braying buffoons we now have, but his manner can seem awfully pontifical at times.) The script regards him at a distance, never exploring his decision to sign a loyalty oath or the political alliances in the early 1930s that would return to haunt him; such interesting details are left unaddressed because, one suspects, they might not burnish his heroic image. Furthermore, Clooney's performance is scaled to the camera; it's focused and well-spoken but inhabits the narrowest ranges. He has his moments -- especially when, following the forced jollity of a Person to Person interview with Liberace, his face falls, exhausted by the pianist's drivel about loving the ladies -- and, throughout the evening, he exerts a natural authority. But the entire production seems designed to keep him well inside his comfort zone.

Standouts in the supporting cast include Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, Murrow's partner in crime, even to the point of purchasing ad time for See It Now when the sponsor, Alcoa, balks; Paul Gross as network CEO William Paley, martyred and irritable at the news division's vanishing revenue; and Clark Gregg as newscaster Don Hollenbeck, brought low by personal and professional woes, especially when the columnist Jack O'Brien eviscerates him in print. Carter Hudson and Ilana Glazer are charming as Joe and Shirley Wershba, colleagues secretly married against CBS rules, who, rather too obviously, exist as a kind of Greek chorus, bringing us up to date on the latest developments and debating points that the principal characters neglect to address.

In its scale and appreciation for the tiniest detail, Pask's scenic design is an impressively epic piece of work. (Interestingly, this season he has designed scenery for two plays -- the other is Glengarry Glen Ross -- being staged in massive theatres usually reserved for large-scale musicals.) It's an ideal set for a 1950s-era workplace drama set in one location, filled with characters coming and going; too bad that's not the play that Clooney and Heslov wrote. David Bengali's projections - often displayed on TV sets embedded in the proscenium -- include some real gems, especially the period commercials for products like Colgate. Still, one wonders if having real actors play characters like Radulovich and McCarthy might not inject some needed juice into the drama. Everything is lit in peerless noir style by Heather Gilbert, who imbues the action with a true black-and-white feeling. (She gets an assist from the actors, who, constantly smoking, call up more haze than you find in many rock concerts.) Daniel Kluger's discreet amplification is helpful in this big theatre (and, especially, a star not skilled in projecting his voice). I'm beginning to think of costume designer Brenda Abbandandolo as the queen of mid-twentieth-century styles; her understanding of the era's men's tailoring is authoritative.

Without question, Good Night, and Good Luck is going to be a monster hit; it has already posted the highest weekly grosses ever seen on Broadway. But a play that should strike at the heart of this tense and perilous moment has all the excitement of the after-dinner speech that bookends the action. It is edifying rather than exciting. It speaks its mind, but it doesn't thrill. --David Barbour