Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke delivers a charming, lived-in performance as lyricist Lorenz Hart, holding court at Sardi’s on the historic night of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) greatest triumph: the premiere of Oklahoma!

In Blue Moon, director Richard Linklater crafts a riveting chamber piece set in real time at Sardi’s on the historic night in 1943 of Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) greatest triumph: the premiere of Oklahoma! Ethan Hawke delivers a charming, lived-in performance as Rodgers’ former collaborator, lyricist Lorenz Hart, an alcoholic and marginally closeted raconteur grappling with the fact that Rodgers’ biggest success now belongs to a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein.

As flowers and accolades pour into the restaurant, heralding a new era of American musicals, Hart holds court at the bar, regaling a plainspoken bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and a young, aspiring composer and military officer with stories. His current fixation is a 20-year-old Yale student, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), whom he reveres with a fervour that drifts between romantic longing and aesthetic worship.

Among the guests is essayist E. B. White (Patrick Kennedy), perched in a corner, making his presence known to offer le mot juste — “ineffable” — during one of Hart’s rhapsodic monologues about Elizabeth. The film imagines White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, drawing creative inspiration from Hart as he contemplates a shift into children’s literature.

Hart and Rodgers affectionately spar throughout the night, working through the regrets in their partnership and promising to start anew. Ultimately, through Hart’s reflections on love, art, and legacy, the film becomes a bittersweet elegy for his overshadowed place in musical history — a graceful tribute to the man behind Pal Joey, A Connecticut Yankee, “My Funny Valentine,” and the titular “Blue Moon.”