Blue Moon

Or: The Lover

Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) is a name to conjure with. Short of stature, stooped of shoulder, but a behemoth of presence, the songwriter defined a generation with his wit, romanticism, and his love of beauty and brightness. This one-night bio-pic by Richard Linklater finds the lyricist at the tale end of his storied career haunting the bar at Sardi’s one night in in 1943, awaiting the arrival of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) who has just opened a new show with a new collaborator. After more than twenty years in continual (if not necessarily harmonious) collaboration, Lorenz wants to woo Richard (or as he calls him, nor unlovely, “Dick”) back to his side. Never to leave only one ball in the air, he has similar hopes that this night he can, by charm and gentility and the power of friendship, win his way into the bed, or at least the heart, of poet Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley). The problem with the latter is that Elizabeth is two decades his junior and the problem with the former is Dick’s new partner is Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) and the play they’ve just opened is Oklahoma. The tide is changing and poor Lorenz is stranded on the pier.

I do love a Linklater piece, dear reader. There’s something so immediate, so refreshing about his sense of intimacy, that well suits Lorenz’s king of nutshells persona. It feels tailored to the attention of the audience and easy on the nerves even as it ratchets up the interpersonal tension wrung by rung. The script by Robert Kaplow is a warm, leisurely shower in a dim, sweet smelling space; nothing particularly punchy but a steady, pleasurable experience but slightly aware of just how vulnerable you are. One slip of foot, or tongue,  and this could turn serious indeed.

Hawke talks a mile a minute, and cracks his face and heart open for all comers. Witty and scathing (it’s delightful to hear him read Oklahoma, or “Oklahoma Exclamation Point,” to filth. What is that elephant doing in a cornfield anyway?) his dissection of lyrics, of the human spirit,  his zany plots, and simmering grievances, zip round after each other. He’s utterly charming and entirely wearisome and one winces for those without necessary ballast of character, (such as Morty (Jonah Lees) the diegetic pianist) who get caught in his current. Yet it’s also apparent and heart lifting to see his instant report with people who would be extras to another mover and shaker, like Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) the earthy barman. His volubility is best matched by E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), another denizen of the periphery, self contained and quietly composed, but always proffering exactly the right word or phrase when the conversation needs an extra flash of brilliance.

It’s Hawke’s show undeniably but the tempest he and the script whip up together makes it clear that Lorenz, for all his genius, isn’t the only player on the stage. Qualley’s Elizabeth, a straight-shooting and level-gazed chancer, cherishes the respect and adoration of her Head Simp in Charge, but if she allows him to a peak at and a brush of her innermost soul and secret workings, it’s only because she’s clambering onto his shoulders to loftier heights. Muses after all, by right, get to choose who they bestow, or revoke, their favor, and deserve living space than the boundaries of a pedestal. Her confessions of a romantic mishap, delivered by Qualley with offhanded heartbreak, might be totally unfreighted of desire or secondary purposes. You could almost believe they were true friends indeed.

But for all the salivating over tender flesh and the ribald of jokes of Lorenz’s infamously wide ranging sexuality, the real love story is, at least on paper, entirely plutonic and we are already watching it wither. I can’t think of another actor besides Andrew Scott who so completely blends lovability with menace, flippancy with peril and he is in fine form tonight. Shark-eyed Dick Hart cruises through his party, incapable of enjoying his triumph, mind already set on stringing measures across a new story. The one person he makes time for, again and again, is his old collaborator. Indeed he wants to work with Lorenz again, provided the voluble, erratic lyricist make some serious (but not unreasonable) lifestyle changes. Their conversation carries on easy, without the fireworks of the one or the dead murmurings of the other, but when they stick come to their respective sticking points their bladed phrases, narrow and barbed, sink deep. There’s a wonderful throwaway gesture when Lorenz introduces his current muse to his former partner. “She’s very striking” Scott remarks and adds a little pop of the eyes and hand that’s so animal, so perfectly expressive my mind went all fireworks. Like E.B. White, when the script and performances are this rich, its the simple contained things that linger. Similarly, the last lingering glance Dick gives Lorenz through a glass door, distills in its blankness the look one would give someone who to whom you have given your heart, your mind, and twenty years of your life. Give all that and be all to aware that whatever may come next, you’ll never know the likes of him again.