Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chaotic times call for clear focus. Good Night, and Good Luck grasps this in dramatising Edward R Murrow\u2019s investigation of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee witch-hunts in the 1950s. George Clooney plays the newscaster as a noble grey avatar of ethics and decency in this close stage reworking of the 2005 film of the same name that he directed and co-wrote with Grant Heslov.David Cromer\u2019s bracingly timely production at New York\u2019s Winter Garden Theatre in one sense resembles a revival, bringing to the era of Trump and Musk a message originally keyed to George W Bush and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Murrow\u2019s incisive television monologues against McCarthy\u2019s abuses have always been inspiring. But now, in a month when tens of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets, they have acquired flashing-siren immediacy. This is a play about the need for an entire population to maintain backbone in the face of power, and Clooney\u2019s steely performance drives this home.Scott Pask\u2019s detailed mock-up of the CBS offices whirrs with the busy urgency of broadcast journalism. All of this resolves into fixed attention whenever Murrow\u2019s See It Now goes on air, Clooney facing the camera on one side of the stage while a giant screen lowers to show his live-feed close-up. Reckonings unfold in assorted spaces on the shifting stage: an editorial room, an executive\u2019s office, a break area. High up on a raised platform, a singer (Georgia Heers) croon numbers with eerily resonant titles such as \u201cI\u2019ve Got My Eyes On You\u201d.The newsroom cast \u2014 including Ilana Glazer as a staffer secretly married to a colleague \u2014 provides bustle and the sense of a larger community at stake. But the heart of the drama is Murrow versus McCarthy. In the freefall of 2025, Murrow\u2019s 1950s show provides a model of independence. He defends an Air Force lieutenant attacked by a smear campaign, and dissects McCarthy\u2019s tactics using \u201cthe junior senator\u2019s\u201d own words (shown in clips). The risks of speaking out are vividly shown in pressure from CBS management to present both sides of each issue, and in advertisers pulling out.Clooney (replacing the film\u2019s David Strathairn) shrewdly dials down his star wattage, playing Murrow as an almost undertakerly figure with an unerring steadiness. But he loosens up when he is with his producer Fred Friendly (a jovial and conspiratorial Glenn Fleshler) or ill-fated fellow newscaster Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg). Gregg brings a tender fragility to the bewilderment of their political moment \u2014 \u201cI wake up in the morning and I don\u2019t recognise anything\u201d \u2014 while McCarthy plays his unctuous self in archive footage (as does Liberace in one of the amusingly canned celebrity interviews Murrow had to conduct).The sense of direct address to the audience is reinforced by bracketing scenes of Murrow at a podium delivering his famous 1958 speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Its warnings are pointedly pertinent to today \u2014 the media are \u201cbeing used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us\u201d \u2014 in a production that repeatedly elicits say-amen applause from the audience. Metatexts also hover: Clooney entering the US political fray last summer by questioning President Biden\u2019s fitness to govern; McCarthy shown in clips with lawyer Roy Cohn, later a mentor to Donald Trump.Above all, Murrow, who broadcast from London during the Blitz, doesn\u2019t flinch. It\u2019s as if he immediately recognises what HUAC target Lillian Hellman called \u201cthe fierce, sweeping, violent nonsense-tragedies that break out in America from time to time.\u201d His trademark sign-off \u2014 \u201cGood night, and good luck\u201d \u2014 remains a sobering call to action in dark times.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606To June 8, goodnightgoodluckbroadway.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chaotic times call for clear focus. Good Night, and Good Luck grasps this in dramatising Edward R Murrow\u2019s investigation of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":267743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-267742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267744,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267742\/revisions\/267744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}