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What makes something filmed theater as opposed to digital performance?
Should we call any performance on a screen television?
We go around and around, wondering if definitions even matter.
On the one hand, I spend hours thinking about categorization.
On the other, I know fussing about genre is how critics have always entertained themselves.
We have to argue about something.
At least HBOs foray into quarantine creation,Coastal Elites, offers the swift gift of clarity.
This show isclearlytheater, regardless of the delivery system.
Its theatrical in its execution, too.
But no, HBO polish aside, a monologue always smells of the stage.
Venues large and small have been releasingtonsofthismaterial, all of it made in quarantine.
So why cant I forgiveCoastal Elitesfor being not so good?
The way it panders to an assumed New York audience?
The arrogant cracks about Nebraska?
There is a little burst of very good writing in the show, right at the start.
(Thats no surprise.
), a tote-bag toter.
Shes a cliche, but she knows it Midler gives her a winning, oh-shucks-you-know-Im-kidding twinkle.
You like the theater?
she asks, leaning confidingly into the camera.
So thats a no.
Theatergoers, and I shamefacedly include myself, are always eager to believe that theatergoing itself is inherently courageous.
Rudnick, an old pro, knows just how much we like to be flattered.
On TV though, shes obviously met with stone silence.
In that quiet, her season-ticket defiance reveals itself as absurd and narcissistic.
Rudnicks wry title and Midlers knowing smarm argue yes; the rest of the show argues no.
The other four monologues are all flat by comparison.
Culture certainly doesnt happen in any of the middle zones.
Worse, the nurse meets a patient who makes jokes about a coronavirus test.
Well, lets hope its cancer, the indomitable New Yorker says.
People dont have gallows humor in Wyoming?
It didnt have to be this enraging.
But much of the monologue-based work needs and has been getting some generosity from the viewer.
It needs an audience leaning forward, eager to be pleased, happy to be supportive.
Goalposts havent just been moved; they are in mothballs.
With those visual markers, we expect a script that has also been polished and buffed.
But on the bright side, it would have been worse to experience it with an audience.
Imagine the fury you would feel if that Wyoming line had gotten even a single laugh.
Id rather go toPhantom.
