“The Gilded Age” had a remarkable number of Broadway veterans in its cast over its first two seasons, and many of them are returning for Season 3, which launches tonight – just the first reason why theater lovers will continue to savor this series about rich people in late 19th century New York.
More Tony winners have appeared in “The Gilded Age” than in almost any other TV series in history (It’s probably second only to the Law and Order franchise, which has been around 33 years longer.) But what will appeal to Broadway fans is not just the chance to see on screen performers we know from the stage. It’s what they bring from the stage.
At a recent press conference for the series, I asked two of the Tony winners how all these performers’ stage experience has affected the dynamic of “The Gilded Age.”
Cynthia Nixon: “I think it’s been effective in a lot of ways, but particularly in dealing with language. They’re used to dealing in classical plays. In the theater, language is paramount.”
Christine Baranski: “Exactly.”
It’s the stage actors’ performances, and these two in particular, that help us avoid completely dismissing “The Gilded Age” as a soap opera.
Baranski and Nixon portray sisters Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook Forte, old-money society ladies who live across the street from the nouveau-riche Russell family. These are the two households around which much of the action revolves.
As the new season starts, in an episode entitled “Who Is In Charge Here?” Agnes has lost all her money and Ada has come into a huge inheritance, reversing their dynamic, in humorous and engaging ways, that carry us through the whole season.
Meanwhile, the Russells aim ever higher – Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) in society, George Russell (Morgan Spector) in industry, both roping their children into their ambitions.
Other returning Tony winners, in alphabetical order: Celia Keenan-Bolger as the Russell family’s housekeeper Mrs. Bruce, Nathan Lane as society arbiter and gadfly Ward McAllister, Audra McDonald as the mother of Peggy Scott (who works as Agnes’ secretary), Debra Monk as Agnes’ bigoted maid, Donna Murphy as Mrs. Astor, Kelli O’Hara as Aurora Fane, Agnes’s put-upon niece – and this is just a list of the Tony winners in the returning cast, not returning Tony nominees or other Broadway veterans, and not the Tony winners among the newly added cast. (That’s part of the second reason to see the show.)
2. Jordan Donica, Phylicia Rashad and Leslie Uggams
Despite all the high-mindedness I offer in Reason 1, Broadway fans will surely swoon at the new character portrayed by Jordan Donica, whom they will remember as Freddy in My Fair Lady (singing “On The Street Where You Live” to Eliza Doolittle) and Lancelot in Camelot (singing “If Ever I Should Leave You” to Guenevere) for which he was nominated for a Tony. Donica portrays Dr. William Kirkland, who is called to tend to Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) who has fallen ill, when Agnes’ regular doctor refuses to treat her because she’s Black. It is hardly a spoiler to reveal that William and Peggy continue to see each other after she recovers (why else would they introduce a handsome Black man into the series?)
Dr. Kirkland comes with some baggage, which is to say his mother (portrayed by Tony winner Phyicia Rashad), who disapproves of Peggy, but also his father (Tony winner Brian Stokes Mitchell), who is more accepting. This introduces us to the world (based on the historical record) of the Black elite community of Newport, Rhode Island in which Dr. Kirland was raised; it features features such Black Society ladies as Mrs. Kirkland’s friend Mrs. Brown (portrayed by Tony winner Leslie Uggams.)
Mrs. Kirkland’s attitude sets up a clash with Peggy’s family – in other words, a delicious couple of scenes between Audra McDonald and Phylicia Rashad.
3. Andrea Martin, Victoria Clark, Dylan Baker…
More Broadway veterans, two Tony winners and a Tony nominee, have been added to the cast:
Victoria Clark portrays the mother of a man named Carlton who wants to marry Gladys Russell. But, like Mrs. Kirkland towards Peggy, Mrs. Russell doesn’t think Carlton is good enough for her daughter.
Dylan Baker portrays a later white doctor, apparently less bigoted.
Andrea Martin portrays a psychic named Madame Dashkova, whom newly widowed Ada seeks out to talk to her dead husband. The psychic is a low-level, maybe even well-meaning, con artist, and serves as a kind of comic relief. But the scenes between her and Nixon also help establish a dramatic arc for Ada in which she is seeking out a purpose in life, embracing first the temperance movement and then women’s suffrage — all of which (humorously) irks her sister.
4. Nathan Lane is set free
Nathan Lane’s character betrays his society friends and benefactors in almost precisely the way that Truman Capote did. It makes for a juicier part, albeit with little screen time.
5. Patrick Page is set free.
Patrick Page becomes full-on villain. It’s only in a couple of scenes (and I shouldn’t spill the details), but we finally get a taste of the kind of character he does to perfection on stage; he even crafted a one-man show “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” in which he gets to play all of them.
6. Bobby Steggert is back!
It’s a small role, you might not recognize him, but people who know Steggert, and know that he retired from acting almost a decade ago to become a therapist, will rejoice at welcoming him back portraying the famous (real-life) portrait artist John Singer Sargent.
Four Ways “The Gilded Age” is annoying
1. I say that Nathan Lane and Patrick Page are set free, but in truth the series doesn’t fully take advantage of their magnificent talents, nor those of the other theater artists In the cast, either because they are given such relatively little screen time, or because they just don’t get to do what they do so well. I’m thinking for example, of Kristine Nielsen, an actress of uncommon comic gifts, who portrays Mrs. Bauer, Agnes’ cook. It’s an appealing portrait, but she gets to do little more than be German and behave motherly to the other servants.
2. Series creators Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield kill off characters a great deal too abruptly, and conveniently, and may I say, heartlessly. We’ve already seen this in the series – most annoyingly when Ada’s loses her new husband the Reverend Luke Forte shortly after marrying him, a loss compounded by the part having been portrayed by Tony winning dreamboat Robert Sean Leonard. The deaths in season 2 are of minor characters, but there are major near-deaths, which feels worse – as if the creative team determines who lives or dies by the value of their life to their series.
3. Phylicia Rashad’s character is a pompous bigot, disapproving of Peggy’s family because her father was born a slave (and, implied, because they don’t have the lighter skin of the Kirkland family.)
This would be easier to accept, even intriguing, if it weren’t part of a Julian Fellowes pattern: Many of the rich women are, to put it bluntly, bitches, bossy to their children, and mean and transactional to the rest of the world — while at the same time their husbands are kinder and more reasonable. This is the case as well with the central couple, the Russells. How accurate could it be that the robber barons of the late nineteenth century were the nice ones in the family?
4. Speaking of robber barons, it feels odd indeed to feel seduced into rooting for the one percent of a previous century when there is an all-out Republican-led effort to favor the rich at the expense of the poor and the middle class at this very moment. During the era in The Gilded Age – in 1890 — Jacob Riis published a groundbreaking book entitled “How the Other Half Lives,” documenting the harsh realities of poverty and squalor in New York City’s tenements. But the creative team’s idea of “the Other Half” in this costume drama is restricted to the rich people’s servants and their wards.
In the previous season Agnes’ footman Jack (Ben Ahlers) invented a new kind of clock, and there is a promise in the new season of his achieving success with it. Ada encourages his aiming for the American Dream. Agnes tells him he should wake up from it: “Money and success do not bring happiness. Have you thought about that?”
“It’s possible of course M’am,” he replies politely. “But I’d like to find out for myself.”
It’s a funny line. It’s the only acknowledgement that I can recall from all eight episodes of Season 3 of anybody being dissatisfied with the inequality of the socioeconomic classes (as opposed to racial or gender inequality.)
