Have you seen The White Lotus?” “Have you seen The White Lotus?” “Seriously, you haven’t seen The White Lotus?” This was standard dinner conversation throughout the summer, as the HBO series, about privileged Hawaiian hotel guests and the staff who tend to them, skyrocketed from critical acclaim to full-blown cultural cult. And in a cast featuring Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, and others, few performances have gotten more attention than that of Australian actor Murray Bartlett, who played the hotel’s manager, Armond. Armond, straining from pleasing people who do not see him and the struggle of sobriety, became something of a new-millennium Howard Beale. When he couldn’t take it anymore, we were right there with him.
It’s a complex performance, veering from hospitable gleam to gurning debauchery, and the…
