urban excavations

[Full article published in Quill Magazine June 3, 2025.]

On June 7, CNN will be broadcasting, live from Broadway, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” a play written by and starring George Clooney. We asked Martha Wade Steketee, president of the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association, to provide some background and context.

 Good Night, and Good Luck on Broadway will be issuing Edward R. Murrow’s famous sign-off for the penultimate time on Saturday evening, June 7, to a live audience worldwide.

Adapted by George Clooney and his co-writer Grant Heslov following the text and texture of their 2005 film of the same name, the play tracks journalist Murrow and his CBS “See It Now” colleagues taking on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti-communist rantings in the early 1950s and their struggle with corporate support of news programming.

While this isn’t a history lesson (although some may see it as so), the theatrical version plays more as a call to arms. 

Streamed by the host channel for the broadest worldwide access, the June 7 live broadcast offers a sparely told history of moments of courage in the battle against government overreach. Although taking place over half a century in the past, there are, of course, a shocking number of lessons for the present day.

The play on the stage of the Winter Garden has been received variously by critics, who all seem to have extolled the importance of Edward R. Murrow and the other historical figures featured, but with notes on the success of the translation of the original film to an immense Broadway stage.

….

Critics find quibbles with how the story is told, but all agree that the story of 1953 broadcast journalism embarking on the takedown of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee is worth hearing. While this play (and the movie on which it is based) can be accused of hagiography, the themes rouse an audience and underscore a series of lessons in civic engagement and the obligations of every citizen to study history and be wary of government assertions of truth.

[continued]