NEW YORK, New York — A golden light shines on an empty podium in the center of the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. A man—Edward R. Murrow, played by George Clooney—walks onstage toward the podium, columns of smoke flanking him. He takes a drag from a cigarette in his right hand, the light shines on his jet-black, gel-slick hair.

“This just might do nobody any,” Murrow says. “At the end of this discourse, a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest.”

“Good Night, and Good Luck” opened on Broadway two weeks ago and is already smashing records, drawing in actors, reporters and New York theater-goers.

Written by Clooney and based off the 2005 movie of the same name—which was directed and written by Clooney— “Good Night and Good Luck” is a timely play about Murrow’s toe-to-toe against Joesph McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin who started a witch hunt in the federal government to track supposed communist sympathizers, which ultimately led to McCarthy’s downfall. The play is 90 minutes with no intermission.

“Good Night, and Good Luck” offers a respite from the glitz and glamor of Broadway, the tone and tempo bearing a striking resemblance to the 2018 “To Kill a Mockingbird” Broadway adaptation. It’s quick, sometimes funny but still somewhat dark and will leave audience members turning it over in their heads for days.

It closely resembles the movie, but doesn’t entirely copy it.

Broadway shows adapted from movies are typically based on movie musicals (La La Land) or turned into musicals from movies (Mean Girls, Legally Blonde). “Good Night, and Good Luck”—thankfully—is not a musical.

But the choreography and lighting are as engaging as a musical. 1950s era TVs line the stage sides, showing 50s TV and, on occasion, a massive square screen is lowered onto center stage and will play either archived footage of McCarthey or Murrow’s broadcasts live via a 50s era camera— aesthetically much like one in WSU’s Goertzen Hall.

The set itself centers around the 1950s CBS newsroom, filled with cigarette smoke—enough to send audience members into coughing fits—and stacks of paper and newspapers piled onto desks. Above stage right is a high-rise where a jazz quartet plays and sings during swift set changes.

Clooney decided against playing Murrow in his 2005 movie, saying he wasn’t able to fully encapsulate Murrow.

“Murrow had a gravitas to him that at 42 years old I didn’t — I wasn’t able to pull off,” Clooney told 60 Minutes.

Clooney has certainly mastered that gravitas since, forgoing his usually buzzy, casual voice for a crisp, louder and more formal tone—one may call it a broadcast voice. He moved and spoke like Murrow—leaning onto the right side of his desk during a broadcast and tilting his head slightly. It was an odd transformation, from watching him on the 2009 medical drama, “ER,” not even a few hours before, to seeing him perform as Murrow.

Clooney has never even performed on Broadway before—the program jokingly telling viewers to “buckle up”—yet he seems to master the space around him, much like any other seasoned Broadway lead.

Clooney’s supporting cast is just as good—hailing from sit-coms (Ilana Glazer, “Broad City”) to Broadway royalty (Glenn Fleshler, “Death of a Salesman”).

Murrow seems to be a refuge of calm and sanity from the chaos of the McCarthy era, as well as the current news-media landscape. Audience members said Murrow, who died in 1965, is rolling in his grave seeing the current media atmosphere. Murrow does seem upset by the way media has been used in the 1950s in the play.

“We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information; our mass media reflect this,” Murrow says in the play. “Unless we get off our fat asses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who work at it and those who work for it may see a totally new picture too late.”

Murrow seems to blame Americans for causing this, quoting Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in a rebuke to McCarthy — “The fault, dear Brutus,  is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

The play challenges journalistic standards—ones that Murrow himself set. Murrow’s colleagues argue to him about this throughout the play.

“I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument,” Murrow sharply rebuts.

The play strikes a chord with audience members. The line “it seems all the reasonable people have taken a flight to Europe” elicited loud laughs from the audience. The play is about the present, through the lens of history, and the end of the play gives a stark warning.

After a montage of news and television clipping from the last 60 years plays on the massive screen, ending with Elon Musk’s alledged January Nazi style salute, Murrow stands at the podium.

“The fault, dear Brutus,” he takes a long pause, “Good night, and good luck.”