Someone once suggested that I follow some conservatives on Twitter. The rationale being that dissenting voices would teach me to think about issues and politicians in a new way. To which I say: Life is too damn short. If I want to hear from right-wingers, I’ll call my parents.
So I am probably the perfect audience for HBO’s Coastal Elites, a collection of five liberal-and-proud monologues penned by playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and social commentator Paul Rudnick and directed by Jay Roach (Bombshell). If you’re voting for the pathetic comb-over in an ill-fitting suit who currently, and shamefully, occupies the White House, switch to Fox News and have a pleasant evening.
[Read Bob Verini’s ★★★ review here.]
Coastal Elites opens with its biggest star, Bette Midler, playing Miriam, a retired New York City public school teacher who’s a passionate lover of not-for-profit theater, tote bags, and The New York Times. “The real Times—the newsprint Times,” she clarifies. “The New York Times online is The New York Times for the gentiles.” Currently she’s in the clink after a confrontation with a MAGA hat–wearing blowhard in a coffee shop comes to blows in the Public Theater. In a brief moment of madness, Miriam considers canceling her subscription to the house that built Hamilton—“No more five-hour plays where people in nice apartments debate socialism!”—but the house manager, Heliotrope, helps her come to her senses. Thank goodness she was able to squeeze in her matinee before her interrogation! Such an outlandish anecdote might have been more at home, say, on the stage of the Martinson Theater (pre-pandemic, Coastal Elites was conceived for the Public); on the small screen, it strains credulity. Also, can you imagine a MAGA hat even making it past the lobby of the Public?
The remaining monologues are more issue-driven. In “Supergay,” Mark (Schitt’s Creek star/cocreator and comic whiz Dan Levy) is an up-and-coming actor who’s played “a crusading gay congressional intern,” “a rookie gay firefighter,” and “a quirky gay tech guru.” But now he’s on the verge of landing a breakthrough role: “the first big-screen summer blockbuster studio tentpole openly gay superhero.” Fusion uses his powers to “fight racists, sexists, and homophobes.” But in multiple auditions, the powers that be—the people “in their cashmere and Converse”—want Mark to play up the very stereotypes Fusion is supposedly breaking down.
“The Blonde Cloud,” performed by Issa Rae of HBO’s critically acclaimed Insecure, allows Rudnick to take aim at one of his frequent Twitter targets, Ivanka. (If you don’t follow Rudnick on Twitter, you must.) Rae’s character, Callie, went to boarding school with the first daughter, whom she does not recall with fondness. “I remember thinking, Is that your real voice? Is that anyone’s real voice?” Callie tells a friend via video chat. “At first I thought she was a floral arrangement.” The real drama comes when Callie’s very rich father drags her to the White House (her dad’s money earns them an invite from the current avaricious occupant). After a brief Melania sighting—“Nothing moves. Even her hair has Botox. She’s Dracula with a blowout and a spray tan”—Ivanka swoops in and takes her former schoolmate up to the Lincoln Bedroom to chat. Ivanka wants to be Callie to be her (rich photogenic Black) friend! That is an encounter I would pay good money to see.
The final two monologues take a more somber turn. “Because I Have to Tell Someone” finds Clarissa (Sarah Paulson), host of “Mindful Meditations With Clarissa,” unable to attain her desired state of peace and calm after a trip to her tiny Wisconsin hometown. In her house, “almost all of them are wearing MAGA hats. Even the dog.” Then her mom says something about how “this virus hoo-hah” is “all going to be over … like a miracle” and her brothers accuse her of having “TDS,” a “derangement syndrome” induced by the current president. (When Obama was president did people have ODS—Obama Derangement Syndrome?) The last piece, the very affecting “President Miriam,” centers on Sharynn (Kaitlyn Dever), a young nurse from Wyoming who’s in New York City helping with COVID-19 patients. She’s keeping her focus on one feisty patient, a woman who, after watching the president’s now-infamous disinfectant comments, demands an infusion of Lemon Pledge and shrugs off a cough with “Well, let’s hope it’s cancer.” Sharynn laughs: “We don’t say shit like that in Wyoming.”
In a prelude to the show, Rudnick explains that he wrote Coastal Elites because “for the past four years pretty much everyone I know has been angry and heartbroken and passionately concerned with the future of our country.” As Miriam says: “I never went to bed in a rage and woke up having a panic attack.” And as Miriam also says: “I can’t even stand to say his name.” Same, girl. Same.
Coastal Elites premiered Sept. 12 on HBO and HBO Max, and on HBO On Demand Sept. 13.
