“I always felt like there was a sadness to Murrow, and that was not something that you could associate with me at 40 years old,” George Clooney recently told Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. She responded by writing, “Now he has to turn back the clock, and cover his salt-and-pepper mane with black dye.” Clooney, at 63, is stepping into the role of Edward R. Murrow in the new play Good Night, and Good Luck, which he co-wrote with Grant Heslov. Set in the golden age of broadcast journalism, the production revisits Murrow’s on-air showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy. At the height of McCarthyism, Murrow and his team defied the federal government and pushed back against the nation’s rising propaganda and paranoia. Onstage, Clooney is surrounded by moving monitors that blend live action with archival broadcasts of Murrow and McCarthy. David Cromer directs. —Jeanne Malle