Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck had its Closing Performance at the Sunday matinee on the same day as the Tony Awards. I am generally not a fan of seeing a show on the same day I am attending the Tony Awards, as the latter is already such a long day, but this was the only free slot in my schedule. And I did want to see this important show before it closed.

I would later learn that the show would do a live broadcast on CNN during the prior performance on Saturday night, Tony Awards Eve. I recorded this performance and am looking forward to watching it when I get a chance. I love this decision to broadcast the show to make it more accessible, as the ticket prices for this show were prohibitively high for many patrons. While seeing a performance on TV is not the same as seeing it live, it is better than not seeing it at all, and viewers still get the excitement of a live show, whereas other televised performances like Hamilton on Disney+ are indeed edited after being filmed over multiple performances.

My first observation in this show was just how complex the set was. It almost felt like I was on a movie set, and indeed, I was in a TV news studio. The set felt chaotic at times, especially when action was happening in multiple places at the same time, and I was not always sure where to look. A patron near me exclaimed out loud, “This is crazy!” My interpretation was that this was exactly the point. The news room was indeed chaotic during this perilous time in the country. While unsettling at times, which was again likely the point, it worked. The show’s chaos stressed me out at times, which reflected the state of society - and a news room targeted by the government. This set was a unique experience compared to other plays.

I enjoyed the set’s incorporation of many old school black and white televisions to show what viewers at home would have been seeing at the time. I tend to think of projections as a modern addition to live theatre, and this was such a creative deployment of modern technology disguised as an old school technology.

One major distraction for me was the air quality in the theatre, due to the excessive usage of stage cigarettes. I get it that everyone chain smoked back then, but wow it was hard to breathe in this theatre. These particular stage cigarettes were just a bit too realistic for my throat. I did not hear excessive coughing in the audience, so I may be in the minority here, but I cannot ever remember any play or musical impacting the air quality this much, even when I am in the path of a smoke or fog machine. If this show were still open, I would be cautioning patrons about this smoke. It was a problem for me. I personally found the stage cigarettes to be a distraction while not adding much to the story. The story is just as powerful without choking on the the smoky theatre air.

I overall enjoyed this play, and I look forward to watching it again via the recording from the Saturday night performance. I will get my kids to watch it with me, since this production has made this possible through this added accessibility.

If you missed this show and did not record it, you may now be able to watch a recording of the live broadcast. Do an Internet search to find it on a reputable streaming source, and be careful to find the play not the movie to see this latest staged production.

See more show reviews from 2025.