GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK Previews

We will not walk in fear, one of another.

George Clooney arrives on Broadway in a play adaptation of his Oscar-nominated film Good Night, and Good Luck, slated to begin previews tomorrow (March 12). Clooney — who plays the CBS broadcaster Edward Murrow — is joined in the principal company by Mac Brandt, Will Dagger, Christopher Denham, Glenn Fleshler (playing Clooney’s film role, Fred Friendly), Ilana Glazer, Clark Gregg, Paul Gross, Georgia Heers, Carter Hudson, Fran Kranz, Jennifer Morris, Michael Nathanson, Andrew Polk, and Aaron Roman Weiner. Good Night, and Good Luck — opening April 3 at the Winter Garden Theatre for a limited run through June 8 — is cowritten by Clooney and Grant Heslov and directed by David Cromer.

“Tune in to the golden age of broadcast journalism and Edward R. Murrow’s legendary, history-altering, on-air showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy. As McCarthyism casts a shadow over America, Murrow and his news team choose to confront the growing tide of paranoia and propaganda, even if it means turning the federal government and a worried nation against them.”

This one’s highly anticipated… who’s going?

MERCH

Mike66 said: "Hi

My wife would like to see this, and was wondering if there is a discount code.

AND also -- while ALL of the prices are outrageous, some are less outrageous than others. So -- what do you think of the ones that are priced at $200 or $300 each rather than for $700 each.

I dont know the Winter Garden well enough to be able to know -- and it would be worse than awful to splurge and go and find she cant see......

THANKS

mike"

The Winter Garden is wide rather than deep. I would pick the least expensive ticket you can find that's towards the center, and don't worry about how far back it is. I sat in the back row for The Music Man very close to the center, and the sightlines were perfectly fine. I sat in the front of the mezzanine but towards house left for Beetlejuice, and the angle was pretty sharp.

For GNaGL, I got a seat in the back of the orchestra but on a center aisle. It was still $300, but the seat view websites all indicate the view is good.

Friend of mine was front row at the invited dress last night and said the person a couple seats over from him was asleep for most of the show.

It definitely shares a lot of similarity with NETWORK, but I found that show much more exciting in its portrayal of a live news broadcast.  That play had an energy that this one did not.

The live band provides a lot of transition music and 3-4 standards of the era (including one that opens the show).  They mostly live on a platform stage left as part of the "in-house band" at CBS.  Wonderfully tight ensemble that sound great.  The saxophone, upright bass, and piano sound fantastic.  And Georgia Heers providing some absolutely stunning vocals.  Definitely helps set the time period and 50s vibes.  But for a 90 minute show, I found myself wanting to get to the meat of the play.

I saw this last night. I fall somewhere in line with liking the overall production, it feels very classy, LOVE the band, but this was definitely a preview performance. The transitions were awful. 

Clooney may improve, but I found him a disappointment. A real case of a movie star that doesn't translate to the stage. I felt like he was always waiting for his closeup. The production would do better to make more use of the screens to accommodate this. He also was a bit unsure of his lines and flubbed a few critical ones. I felt a lack of confidence there, again I hope it improves with previews, but I can't imagine I'd have been satisfied with an $800 ticket based on what I saw.

As I said the production itself is cool, lots of moving set pieces, and the band, and I loved the use of the real life interviews. That said the ending I think is a bit too heavy handed. I don't think anyone watching this would miss the parallels to our times but this show REALLY hammers it home in a bit unnecessary way in my opinion. 

 

ACL2006 said: "Imagine paying $300+ for a ticket to this for it just to be a mediocre play."

Surely the first and only time people have overpaid for a middling-to-bad Broadway show featuring a huge celebrity

Updated On: 3/14/25 at 10:51 AM

Ugh. I’m going to a Broadway show to escape. The very last thing I need to see is that greasy, bloated orange face. 
 

Kad said: "Would anybody mind spoiling the ending?


Van Hove's Network ended with a montage of real-world news clips culminating in footage of Trump. It's hard to imagine something more heavy handed."

 

Good Night, and Good Luck – A Film Stuck on Stage

For a play centered around the urgency and immediacy of live television, Good Night, and Good Luck feels oddly passive. So much of the production relies on archival footage and news broadcasts that it often feels like we’re just watching a screen rather than a fully realized theatrical experience.

The frequent use of projections—while visually effective—only serves to remind us that this material already exists in a medium where it works better.

The entire time, I kept thinking, This would make a great movie. And, of course, it already was.

The production attempts to fill the gaps with long transitions and a live band (who sound fantastic), but these elements feel more like padding than necessity, stretching out the runtime rather than adding depth. The final moments, while heavy-handed, are clearly meant to provoke conversation—and judging by the audience reaction, they succeed.

George Clooney, unsurprisingly, delivers his monologues to the camera with precision and ease. The rest of the cast, unfortunately, doesn’t get much to work with. Ilana Glazer is a delight in a severely underwritten role, a frustrating waste of her comedic and dramatic potential. Visually, the production nails the period details—costumes, music, props, and, yes, so many herbal cigarettes.

But ultimately, even with strong performances and impeccable design, Good Night, and Good Luck struggles to justify itself as a play. The issue isn’t the staging—it’s the material itself.

I just saw this evening's preview performance and echo a lot of the sentiments above. It is way too reliant on videos of news clips and projections and not much of a play.

Furthermore, I agree that the montage at the end is wholly unnecessary for driving their point home. Audiences are perfectly capable of drawing the parallels to the times we live in now themselves, as many others on this thread have pointed out. Additionally, the content shown in the montage is INCREDIBLY graphic at times (and potentially triggering for folks) and there is no content warning given anywhere on their website or Telecharge listing. Shameful. 

Updated On: 3/20/25 at 09:31 PM

I feel a little silly saying this but I’m seeing the play in a few weeks, but I’ve never seen the film. Would you recommend seeing the movie before or after seeing the play? Or does it matter? Thanks.

Review: Good Night, and Good Luck – A Starry Letdown That Misses the Mark

George Clooney’s Broadway debut in Good Night, and Good Luck should’ve been a moment. A timely story, a beloved star, and a marquee theater—it all sounds like the recipe for a hit. Instead, what’s onstage at the Winter Garden is a bloated, sluggish, and strangely lifeless production that feels more like a museum exhibit than a play.

The most glaring problem? There’s barely a play at all. Much of the two-and-a-half-hour runtime is consumed by video montages and projected archival footage, leaving the cast—Clooney included—playing second fiddle to a screen.

It’s less a theatrical experience than a dramatized newsreel, padded with live music and long transitions that feel like attempts to justify the ticket price.

Clooney, a natural on camera, seems strangely adrift onstage. His performance as Edward R. Murrow is polished but distant, and at times, he appeared to stumble through lines. Whether he was reading from a physical script or not, it felt under-rehearsed.

The rest of the cast is equally lost in the production’s cavernous scale—especially in a space like the Winter Garden, where the intimacy this material needs is drowned out by the distance.

The climactic TV montage—meant to send the audience out with a swell of emotion—feels manipulative and overproduced. It plays more like a YouTube tribute video than a theatrical payoff, though judging by the cheers in the audience, it hit its mark for some.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the sense that this show was assembled as a star vehicle, not a piece of living, breathing theater.

The producers may be raking it in, but audiences are left with a flat, uninspired experience.

A BIG STAGE, A BIG NAME, AND VERY LITTLE TO SAY.