CNN will broadcast a Broadway performance of George Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck.' Don't miss it

When “Good Night, and Good Luck” arrived connected Broadway this spring, it initially provoked a astonishing magnitude of cynicism. There were complaints that the adaptation by George Clooney and Grant Heslov was fundamentally a reproduction of the 2005 film, which chronicled CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s heroic crusade against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts.

The sky-high outgo of tickets was different root of criticism. Was Broadway pricing itself beyond the scope of its halfway audience? Reports of “Good Night, and Good Luck” shattering container bureau records served to punctual those who couldn’t spend a summons that they were being near down by a theatre civilization that was siding with the haves implicit the have-nots.

In a Broadway play that featured Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal successful a rudderless “Othello” and Kieran Culkin successful a “Glengarry Glen Ross” revival that mightiness person been stronger without him, “Good Night, and Good Luck” was a convenient people for anti-Hollywood sentiment.

When I arrived astatine the Winter Garden for a Saturday matinee successful April, I can’t accidental my expectations were particularly high. I admired the movie but hadn’t seen it successful astir 20 years. The broodingly elegant production, sharply directed by David Cromer and starring a softly committed Clooney successful the relation of Murrow (played successful the movie by David Strathairn), was not lone 1 of the astir stirring offerings of the Broadway play but besides 1 of the astir necessary.

I near the theatre wishing I could bargain tickets for my friends and family. That won’t beryllium indispensable — thankfully for my recognition cards — due to the fact that CNN volition beryllium broadcasting a unrecorded show of “Good Night, and Good Luck” from the Winter Garden connected Saturday (4 p.m. PDT). It’s seemingly the archetypal clip a Broadway play volition beryllium shown unrecorded connected television, and the timing could not beryllium better.

As media companies look a run of intimidation from the Trump administration, the fig of Murrow, lasting gangly successful the look of demagogic adversity, is the courageous illustration we request close now.

I don’t cognize however antithetic the acquisition volition beryllium watching astatine home, but “Good Night, and Good Luck” made maine bespeak connected what theatergoing mightiness person been similar successful past Greece. Athenian citizens would stitchery astatine an open-air theatre arsenic a antiauthoritarian privilege and responsibility. Playwrights addressed the polis not by dramatizing existent events but by recasting tales from the mythological and historical past to sharpen captious reasoning connected modern concerns.

Clooney and Heslov aren’t penning melodramatic poetry. Their much straightforward attack is person to documentary drama, but the effect is not truthful disparate. We are affirmed successful the cognition that we are the assemblage politic.

CNN volition broadcast the penultimate show of “Good Night, and Good Luck” connected the eve of the Tony Awards. The accumulation is up for 5 Tonys, including 1 for Clooney successful the pb show by an histrion successful a play category. But nevertheless the awards shingle out, Clooney is already a winner. Like Murrow, helium reminds america that conscience tin inactive beryllium a defining diagnostic of the American character.