There’s an energy to the performance of Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon that you don’t often get to see. The actor, who, for multiple reasons, isn’t the best casting choice for Lorenz Hart, seems to recognise that his looks are too good, and there are only so many camera tricks director Richard Linklater can use to try to sell his shorter stature. But if I’d never seen an actor earn his casting more by performance, overcoming physical miscasting before, it would be Hawke in Blue Moon, as he inhales the heavy script from Robert Kaplow and becomes famous lyricist and playwright, Lorenz Hart.

Blue Moon takes place primarily in one location, a bar that Lorenz often visits. A known drunk who is trying to get off the bottles, but this isn’t going to be the night for it. It’s the opening night of ‘Oklahoma!’ Or as Lorenz makes sure to refer to it as every time with despair in its title “Oklahoma, explanation point.” The play was written by Richard Rodgers, Hart’s former longtime collaborator, who has now paired up with Oscar Hammerstein II for this new show. Hartz knows it’s going to be a huge success, but despises the show for being quite trite and, in simpler terms, uninspired and boring by his tastes. 

Hartz spends the first act of Blue Moon chatting with bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), and a piano player in the corner nicknamed ‘Knuckles,‘ (Jonah Lees) by Hart. With all the charm you could muster into a man of his size, Lorenz Hart details his disdain for bad writing, his love for a woman named Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), who will be coming to the Oklahoma! after-party very shortly, and with all the poetic washing of a true alcoholic, talks his way into several drinks, although he is trying to give it all up.

Eventually, Lorenz also spots E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) sitting in the corner, and spends some time going back and forth with the writer. The two come across as the two sides of a coin, with Lorenz Hart, the near-open bisexual who is professing his love for anyone he finds beautiful, and his last affiliation just being Elizabeth, while White is, and was known as a quieter soul. After injecting a joke that implies Lorenz Hart gave E.B. White the idea for Stuart Little, he departs. However, it isn’t the last time some fun is to be had with small cameos, the film also has a great moment where a young Stephen Sondheim is introduced to Lorenz, and more-or-less implies that his writing isn’t as good as he thinks it is; the child would grow up to write West Side City, of course, a play that modernised and re-revolutionised musicals.

The above statement doesn’t imply the film is a cameo-infested 1940s flashbang of who’s who of playwrights. For the most part, the film is interested in one thing only: Lorenz Hart and who he was deep down inside, all of the outward charm and personality, and more than a whiff of booze. Six months after this story takes place, he’d go on to die in an alleyway, alone, drunk, having left the opening night of his latest show, and getting stuck with pneumonia.

Ethan Hawke brings everything to this performance, and it’s a big one with a script I can only imagine being 90% his own. But it’s within all of his tales, often stories or hijinks that sound like they could be lies, that you discover more about the man himself. He loved his work, admired beautiful people, and was passionate about the arts and true artists. He was also someone who wanted to take chances, the idea of sticking to what audiances wanted or expected wasn’t something he cared for; and you gather as much when he discusses potentially working more with Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) who has just delivered a massive success with Oklahoma!, the oppositveo f everything Hart believes to be good about modern musicals.

Whether or not Ethan Hawke and his bald cap were the right choices for Lorenz Hart slowly fade from memory once you start listening to and letting his performance wash over you. He is scene-eating in all the right ways, and his one-on-ones with Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley are sensational pieces of acting from all involved.

[Dylan attended a screening of Blue Moon thanks to the Melbourne International Film Festival]