Coastal Elites Is As Distanced As Its Subjects

Adapting the smuggest aspect of New York theater for the small screen.

one of the hundred reasons this short, horrifying coronavirus moment has felt so long culturally is that its artistic questions don’t seem to change or advance. 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. I spend hours thinking about categorization, but I know fussing about genre is how critics have always entertained themselves. We have to argue about something.

At least HBO’s foray into quarantine creation, Coastal Elites, offers the swift gift of clarity. This show is obviously theater, regardless of the delivery system. Originally conceived by the playwright Paul Rudnick as a group of comic political monologues, it was on track to appear at the

Public Theater this year. Rewritten during covid-19, it was ported over to HBO, and the “special presentation” was shot remotely.