Gossip Central

The Gilded Age on HBO: Oh, the vulgarity of the rich in America!

Mountains of gorgeous food: lobsters, roasted meats, salads, caviar. The eye filling opulence of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey follow up series, The Gilded Age on HBO more than sates any desire for decadence. Forget Stanford White’s magnificent design for the newly completed Russell mansion on turn of the century Fifth Avenue; nothing says conspicuous consumption more than the spread Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) hoped would lure the city’s elite to her home to solidify friendships in wealth. Not surprisingly, snobbery does not work that way. No one shows up. Any readers of the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton would know how the hierarchies among the rich work, their laws finite. Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn looks her chiseled nose down on her neighbors, nailing the divide between Old New York and New. And viewers are left to look on hungrily at the grandeur, and guffaw at the Russell’s servants’ dumping amply piled silver platters into garbage bins.

Audible’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night: What’s Your Poison?

The Tyrones in lockdown look a lot like you and me. Amazon boxes, Chinese takeout, Starbucks, not to mention the Purell. Never mind that Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the classic 1912 American play by Eugene O’Neill, features another kind of affliction than the one we are experiencing. The scaled down version of O’Neill’s play, an Audible production directed by Robert O’Hara at the Minetta Lane Theater, neatly conflates what’s ailing us. The title says much about the longeuers, the boredom, the stasis that forces this family—and us-- to relive sad pasts. The Tyrones in seaside residence make the best of it at first. James (Bill Camp in cut offs) flirts with Mary (Elizabeth Marvel in workout tights), his wife of many years, remarking to their two sons at how great she looks—a picture of health doing yoga. Before too long the tippling begins. Never too early to take a shot: James, the sons Jamie (Jason Bowen), not doing much, and Edmund (Ato Blankson-Wood), ambitious with a bad cough—whiskey is their medium. Mary’s something else, retreating upstairs, visibly tying up her arm, shooting up.

Cecily Strong at the Shed in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

A homeless woman who communicates with aliens, “Trudy” opens the show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, created by Jane Wagner in 1985 for her then partner, now wife, Lily Tomlin. Revived at The Shed, under Leigh Silverman’s astute direction, the baton for dispensing planetary consciousness is passed to Saturday Night Live’s comedic virtuoso Cecily Strong. As Trudy, she wears an ill-fitting coat, its lining bedecked with post-its. How else will wisdom be saved in a world accustomed to one-liners? More aptly, how will this wisdom be communicated to the life beyond our atmosphere? A gimmick maybe, but at the show’s end, audience members picked up post-its on their way out. My bright green one reads: “Humanity’s biggest hurdle is human behavior.”

Bridget Everett Stars in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere: The Heart of Manhattan, Kansas

First aware of Bridget Everett as a mother in Patti Cake$, an indie hit of 2017, I met her on two occasions: she was a flamboyant speaker at the Nantucket Film Festival that year receiving an award. Trust me, you never want to follow her onstage. Second, at the Athena Film Festival, she attended with her pal Murray Hill, so named for the Manhattan, NYC neighborhood. Both make a big impression, HUGE, and now you can see for yourself as Everett stars in an HBO series, Somebody Somewhere, with Hill in a supporting role, directed by Robert Cohen and Jay Duplass. So full of heart, I would say, the series is a gift for Valentine’s Day.

Rural America is a foreign country to me, but Manhattan, Kansas is both strange and ironic given that you cannot imagine a place more remote from Manhattan, New York, ground zero for misfits seeking personal expression. And guess what, looks like Bridget Everett feels the same way. She’s from there, and as Executive Producer of the series featuring autobiographical details from her life, she’s crafted this location, and at least fictionally, finds a voice there. Manhattan, Kansas is to Bridget Everett as Baltimore is to John Waters.