Theater

In One Image ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ by James Estrin with Laura Collins-HughesOne of this spring’s hottest tickets has been the Broadway production of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney.Like the 2005 movie, the play transports audiences to the 1950s, when the CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow faced off against the communist-hunting Senator Joseph R. McCarthy on “See It Now.”In this scene, a team of journalists, including Clooney as Murrow, watch a recording of McCarthy condemning their work.The Banks of Monitors: Scott Pask, the show’s set designer, lined the proscenium with banks of black-and-white broadcast monitors. “There’s this level of immediacy when you’re closer to those,” he said. “But I also just think it frames an epic space in an epic way.”The Big Screen: “The physical decision we made is that we would look at small screens for the beginning of the show,” said David Cromer, the director. “We don’t bring on that big screen until about halfway through.”The Control Room: “There are switches and toggles and all kinds of technical equipment,” Pask said. “Probably most of it doesn’t work, but you see the dimension of all these objects. It’s like taking bits of technology … but then also adding in weird elements like little lights and literally Mason jars glued on the rim, stuck to the wall.”The Audience: “They’re there watching this thing that we made, it seems like with just full attention,” Pask said. “Heads are up. Those people that we’re seeing are within the first seven or eight rows, probably. And I have to imagine most of them are focused looking at George’s response.”In One Image‘Good Night, and Good Luck’June 4, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETOne of the most meticulously textured, three-dimensional period sets on Broadway this season might instead have been conjured in two dimensions, on glowing screens.In the script to “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s stage adaptation of their 2005 movie of the same name, the authors envisioned a set using LED panels throughout.But the play’s Tony Award-winning director, David Cromer, had other ideas for recreating the 1950s broadcast world of CBS and Edward R. Murrow, the anchor of its news program “See It Now.”“They were sort of suggesting it, thought it might be cool,” Cromer said. “And I said, ‘Let’s do it the hard way.’”So he enlisted Scott Pask, an architecturally trained set designer and three-time Tony winner, to take on the challenge at the capacious Winter Garden Theater.Starring the Tony-nominated Clooney as Murrow in his face-off with the crusading Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the show is one of this spring’s priciest tickets. (Its penultimate performance, this Saturday night, will be broadcast live on CNN and livestreamed on CNN.com.)Pask’s set, which earned him another Tony nomination, is the container for it all — as in this photograph, which captures the April 6, 1954, broadcast of “See It Now” on which McCarthy, shown in archival footage, responds to Murrow’s on-air indictment of him. Studio monitors catch Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly (Glenn Fleshler), listening, while their director, Don Hewitt (Will Dagger), sits just downstage. Overlooking the midcentury Manhattan tableau is one of the distinctive arched windows of Grand Central Terminal, because that’s where the real studio was, upstairs.To tell this story each night at the 1,537-seat theater, the creative team had many details to consider, including ensuring that the audience didn’t lose sight of Clooney. “If someone misses him for a beat,” Pask said, “it’s only for a second.”James Estrin/The New York Times

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