Good Night and Good Luck

This is a mediocre play. Without George Clooney it wouldn’t have been mounted. He does a workman-like job, true to the character but, unlike an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman, you can’t forget you’re actually watching George Clooney acting.

The set and electronics are imaginative, but the insistence of characters talking over each other simultaneously is annoying and distracting, as is the “hidden marriage” of two characters who aren’t at all important. (The man was one of the weaker support actors.)

I found that the selected clips and soliloquies were overtly leftist, and the final shot in the scroll of Musk giving an alleged Nazi salute was egregious pandering. (The crowd applauded.) I thought Clooney hammed it up in the closing. In short, this didn’t need to be produced, and since it was with Clooney drawing a crowd, why pander further to the left? (A man who vigorously supported Biden, who then vigorously wanted him to step down, portraying a man of great moral conscience?)

To make matters worse, who shows up in the audience but Kamala Harris, 10^th row center, making sure her presence was known, drawing a standing ovation yelps, hoots, photos, and a ten minute delay in the curtain. After the show she was backstage with the cast, but clearly made herself visible at state right taking bows and clutching her chest, mouthing “fight, fight, fight.” I wanted to fight her. That delayed things still more.

And then, in the promised “talk-back” they brought out three of the actors on stage, but not Clooney, with an execrable Amex interviewer who was beyond embarrassing. That took another 20 minutes and I was debating just running out of the theater into the night.

Frequently, during the evening, “spontaneous” applause erupted whenever McCarthy’s comments could be equated, no matter how circuitously, to Trump. The integration of McCarthy and a few others was quite clever and well done, but Clooney’s earnestness and attempts at heat seemed a threat to the fire laws.

So: You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you have to suit up for them all. This wasn’t Hugh Jackman, or Kevin Spacey (yes, I mean that) or Brian Dennehy, just some of whom we’ve gone to see in special performances. George, and the material are not of that ilk.