Ever since Covid-19 shut down our theatres, movie houses, museums, concert halls, opera houses, jazz clubs, and stadiums – in short, our entire country’s entertainment industry – thus robbing thousands upon thousands of singers, actors, writers, producers, directors, musicians, athletes and countless others, of their livelihood, not to mention their raison d’etre, there has been a marked increase in entertainment offerings on TV, cable, online, blogs, websites and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Disney. Some are free, some are for pay, and all are being eagerly snapped up by pleasure seeking audiences.  

Theaters, opera houses, and dance companies, both large and small, national and international, such as London’s National Theater, New York City’s Public Theatre, Irish Repertory Company, and the Metropolitan Opera, to name but a few, have jumped onto the bandwagon and are offering access, both free and for pay to current and past productions, readings, and interviews with actors, directors, and playwrights. A goodly number of these venues are asking for a donation for their own venue, as well as such organizations as the Actors Fund, Actors Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and The Brooklyn Hospital Center.

Obviously, people need to be entertained, performers need to perform, producers need to produce, and venues and creative workforces need to be supported.

The most blatant change, brought about by Covid-19 is the need for people, in all walks of life, along with you and me, and an army of bloggers, professional entertainers and artistic creators to talk about, be it in fact or fiction, in their everyday talk, or in their writings, paintings, dance and song, how the Covid19 virus is affecting their daily lives.  

The most powerful “in your face” presentation that I saw this past summer was Jessica Blank’s and Erik Jensen’s film The Line (below, image courtesy The Public Theater), a documentary-style play offered online for a month of streamable performances by the Public Theatre. All six actors, mouthing the words taken from actual interviews of front line Covid-19 workers, take on the personas of real-life doctors, nurses, paramedics and other personnel in New York hospitals. Their stories are harrowing. The bravery of these workers, all who are putting their lives at risk, is inspirational.    

Here we meet Sharon, a virus-surviving hospital nurse who was caring for geriatric patients when the pandemic first hit and swept away many of her patients. Davis, an ex-actor turned nurse who uses his talents to bring laughter to his Covid-19 patients. Vikram, the son of Indian immigrants, an oncology doctor who works in the hospital’s emergency department. Dwight, an oncology nurse, who emigrated from Trinidad and has been working in the same hospital for 22 years, and Jennifer, a first-year intern who works in emergency at a hospital in Brooklyn whose patients are predominantly from the Caribbean. Echoing everybody’s experiences is Ed, an ex-Vietnam medic who sees the city of New York itself as a pandemic battlefield.     

Another pre and post Covid-19-slanted offering heavily peppered with condemnation of Trump and the current administration—as presented one time only this past September—was HBO’s Coastal Elites. It was originally written to be performed as a play at New York City’s Public Theater by playwright and novelist Paul Rudnick, widely known for his humorous and satirical writings appearing regularly in the New Yorker, and directed by Matthew Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers, Trumbo, Bombshell). With the closing of all theatres in the city, the live performance was never realized.   

In the HBO production, we get five fictional monologues, each one running 15-to-20 minutes. All but one are filmed in a single take. The actors, sitting in their own space—behind a desk, in a TV studio, or in their own apartment—break the fourth wall and look directly at the viewer, delivering their story, each from their own perspective. One can be seen talking to a policeman, another to his therapist, a third to her TV audience, and two, presumably to us.

Coastal Elites kicks off during the rolling of the film’s credits with various possible subtitles being flashed across the screen. First up is “five heart tugging monologues.” Quickly morphing into “five unhinged rants,” and “five desperate confessions, it ends up reading, “Five desperate confessions from people barely coping with the new abnormal,” a more appropriate title, given that the characters are frightened, confused, and infuriated by the current state of politics, culture, and the pandemic.

Each of five segments are titled, and dated for the month they presumably take place. Each leads off, pre-monologues with chanting in the background and familiar sound bites of Trump, daughter, Ivanka and Mike Pence.

Bette Midler, the production’s major calling card, kicks things off with Lock Her Up in the character of  Miriam Nessler (right), a left-leaning, Trump-hating New York City liberal Jewish retired school teacher. Her monologue, delivered initially to strains of crowds droning the familiar ‘Lock Her Up’ refrain, presumably occurs before the pandemic. She offers up a hefty serving of self-aware humor, compliments of Paul Rudnick, It is frantically delivered in near-screaming decibels.

Miriam tells her story to a seemingly sympathetic officer at the police station where she ended up after snatching a MAGA hat from total stranger in Starbucks. “Yes, he did file a police report.” Asking the officer, who we never see, in near-begging tones to “Please listen to me so you will understand,” she begins to weave a tale that encompasses everything and the kitchen sink, including her current addiction to collecting tote bags.

Most of Miriam’s anger, just as in Midler’s real-life rants, is directed towards Trump, whom she insists on referring to as HE or HIM. “I am a New Yorker and we always hated Trump. It’s not just the hair and the lying. HE has no style, no sense of humor.  HE tore down Bonwit Teller’s in the middle of the night. HE wouldn’t rent to black people.”

“Even during the Nixon and Roy Cohen days, I didn’t go to bed in a rage and panic attack. I didn’t spend the day in anger and dread, and I didn’t hate the other people, those people from Nebraska and Ohio and Alabama. We didn’t hate them. That’s what HE did. Maybe we weren’t buddies but we didn’t despise them. That’s what HE did.” 

Concluding her explosive rant, an unbowed and refortified Miriam informs the officer and audience alike that “We are fighting that guy, fighting all the bastards. We want our country back and we are going to March and sign petitions and register people to vote.” As for the MAGA hat incident, unwavering in her intentions, she unabashedly declares that she would do it again.

As unlikely and fantastical as Miriam’s story is, it does cover, perhaps even sums up, from every from conceivable angle, all of the worries and concerns of the general public, as well as those of the four story-telling monologists that follow.      

Segment two, dated March, is titled Super Gay. It leads off with the voice of Mike Pence talking about marriage “…that institution that forms the background of our society’s traditional marriage.” Pence, a rabid, long-time antigay crusader, co-sponsored a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution (2004) that would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman, implying that marriage between man and man, and woman with woman is unnatural, “It isn’t our idea. It is God’s idea” he states.      

And with that intro, Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek), above, left, an out gay actor takes the stage. Like Levy himself, the character, Mark Hesterman, is a gay actor living in Los Angeles. Though he does allude to Pence’s homophobia in passing, Mark’s major in conversation with his therapist via video, involves a series of auditions for a starring role as a superhero in a major film. It is a chance of a lifetime and he is worrying how he should play it. Should he show his gay face or should he play it straight? All of which leads him to consider his gay identity and the various compromises he is and isn’t willing to make.   

The Blond Cloud, segment three, takes place during the month of June, leading off with the voice-over of Ivana Trump. We hear Ivanka on the campaign trail, assuring her father’s supporters that Papa Trump “…not only has the strength to be the next president but all the kindness and compassion.”

We then meet actress Issa Rae, playing Callie Josephson (right), an African American and former boarding school classmate of Ivanka Trump. With echoes of Black Life Matters, as protests against police brutality is going on outside Callie’s window, The Blond Cloud, as Callie refers to Ivanka, is every bit as politically minded as her father; that sort of ambition running in the family.

Callie’s story, being told to a friend via video chat, begins with an encounter with Ivanka at a White House dinner for Trump’s monied supporters. Seizing the moment, Ivanka, who has not seen Callie in years, plays the ‘old friend game,’ ushering her up to the Lincoln Bedroom, where stated intent is to enlist Callie’s help in rebranding her image among the African American community. Though this story is strictly fanciful, it is entirely plausible, making this gossipy tale all the more compelling.     

Segment four’s, Because I Have To Tell Somebody starring Sarah Paulson as Clarissa Montgomery, presumably occurring in May, is, hands down, the funniest, Saturday Night Live-inspired, Rudnick-penned monologue. Only in the second half does the tone of Clarissa’s narrative turn on itself, showing us what a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool, Trump-loving heartland family might looks like.

Sweeping past a clatter of voices yelling “Four More Years of Trump”, Paulson playing Clarissa (left), a seemingly spaced out new age guru with her own cable TV show (or is it on YouTube?) is seen giving one of her mediation sessions. Her stone-faced delivery, backed by calming music and bucolic images of trees, valleys, lakes, and fields of wheat and flowers, leads to Coastal Elites’ funniest string of words.

“I know you’re scared” Clarissa begins. “Enlightened words will sooth you or at least allow you to watch CNN without screaming at your partner. I’d like you to close your eyes and envision a hillside lush with wildflowers and overlooking a peaceable and undisturbing valley. You’re like Julie Andrews singing the Sound of Music with her arms opened wide and never dreaming that she would be trafficked by the Catholic Church in becoming an unpaid nanny under a Nazi regime and ultimately marring an employer twice her age, a scenario that can be rightly termed Edelweiss Me2 hashtag none of my favorite things and soon gone trap.”

Visibly breaking down, Clarissa, interrupting her own show leaves the set, only returning to tell the story of her recent visit to her family, all of who are wearing MAGA hats when she arrives. Worse, any anti Trump mentions are dismissed as Fake News by her mother. The only saving grace, after she flees the family home in disgust, is when her father shocking confesses at the airport, just as she is about to board her plane back to Vermont, that it was Trump’s trashing of John McCain, a secret he tells Clarissa to keep from the family, that will be costing the president his vote.   

President Miriam USA, the last and most emotionally moving monologue, is far less driven by the personal ego-driven concerns of the four preceding monologists. It is taking place, in April, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic  Here we that meet Sharynn Tarrow (Kaitlyn Dever) below, right, a young volunteer nurse who comes to New York City from Wyoming to work at Mount Sinai hospital.  

Like all the other monologues, this one is preceded by a string of outrageous Trump claims, where he is heard telling his listeners he is a ‘stable genius,’ and that ‘he can to make America Great Again. Referring to the virus which he contends will soon disappear, he tells us that “Fauchi has been wrong,” and that the first thing we have to do, presumably Trump’s his idea of a cure, is to “hit the body with a powerful light.”

Of course, what Sharynn finds at Mount Sinai hospital contradicts these claims. It is “surreal.” She witnesses people are dying in droves. The halls are filled with the sick waiting for an available room. Refrigerated trucks to hold the mounting dead are parked outside the hospital, and four nurses have come down with the virus. “We’re all just trying to hold it together, Sharynn says “cause that is what were taught at nursing school. Do the job, and provide comfort.“

The story, beautifully told by Kaitlyn Dever, begins after one of Sharynn’s grueling 14-hour shifts at the hospital.  Still wearing her hospital scrubs, her RN photo ID, and her face mask dangling from her right ear, she sits down at her kitchen table. It is obvious that she is tired, overwhelmed, and has a deeply felt need to tell us her story, the gist of which centers around Miriam an elderly female patient she befriends. A tough dyed-in-the-wool Democrat with plenty of wise and sassy sayings, Miriam quickly becomes Sharynn’s touchstone, “the only thing that is keeping me going.”

As fate would have it, after a touch-and-go recovery, and just as Miriam is deemed well enough to be discharged from the hospital, she is felled by a stroke. Devastated that she was not with Miriam during her last minutes, Sharynn is heartbroken. It is a sad, take no prisoners, ending. However, as Sharynn tells us earlier, “If you start crying, you’ll never stop.”  

The production opens with an onscreen script that refers to the characters as “five desperate confessions from people barely coping with the new normal.” There’s anger, exhaustion, disbelief, and frustration blended with comedy to be found in Coastal Elites. The parts of these five performances that aren’t quite as literal in their messaging are more effective. Political art benefits from some kind of distance.  When you are right in the middle of an election involving a current president, having characters talk about their intense dislike for the man is too close to repeating conversations already going on in real life.

Originally written to be performed as a play at New York City’s Public Theater Coastal Elites aims squarely at the hearts of exhausted liberals who might be relieved to see there all-consuming, Trump-focused rage reflected onscreen. Each of these voices bring a different perspective to the story unfolding here. But no single monologue in Coastal Elites can quite shakes the two-dimensional approach of the script.

What art often does well is approach public fury at an angle, excavating it through stories that feel deeply human, or through dark humor or metaphor. The sections of this HBO broadcast that worked best for me are the ones that contain the sharpest and most plausible character portraits, not the ones that contain the most scathing political commentary. Where this production connected were in moments that illuminate human emotion, personal insecurities and depth-of-character, not just characters merely talking about politics and politicians.  

By Edward Rubin, Senior Associate Editor