HBO ‘Coastal Elites’ review: Dispatches from the hell of early 2020, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson and Issa Rae
The five monologues making up Paul Rudnick’s “Coastal Elites” were originally planned for an early 2020 New York staging, to be taped for a later HBO special.
The COVID-19 pandemic preempted the “live theater” part of those plans. This gave Rudnick and his director, Jay Roach, of “Recount,” “Game Change” and the recent Megyn Kelly/Roger Ailes docudrama “Bombshell,” time to update the material to respond directly to the early months of the coronavirus crisis. It made sense, given the monologues’ primary subject: How Trump and his supporters are setting the tone for these ever-threatening days.
“Five desperate confessions from people barely coping with the new abnormal” is how Rudnick frames “Coastal Elites,” which starts with “Lock Her Up,” a tour-de-force for Bette Midler. She’s in a Manhattan police station, relaying the reasons why she’s been hauled in to an unseen policeman.
Her character, Miriam Nessler, is a retired public school teacher and full-time culture vulture, who has as much to say about the difference between reading the New York Times in prints vs. online as she does about the MAGA hat-sporting man with whom she got into it, in an East Village coffee shop.
