Review: Blue Moon is musical theatre heaven

It’ll be a while yet before director Richard Linklater finishes his film adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s bittersweet look at the rise and fall of a successful artistic partnership and a trio of friendships.

He’s shooting that film over two decades, reflecting the amount of time that elapses in the show itself. ETA for the movie, by the way, is 2040. If you can’t wait that long, Sony Pictures Classics is releasing the film version of the recent Broadway revival this December.

But arriving this week is Linklater’s Blue Moon (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), yet another look at the end of an artistic collaboration and long-term friendship. It, like Merrily’s early (later? IYKYK) scenes, is set against the backdrop of Broadway. And it will demolish your heart.

Our schlubby antihero is Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), the alcoholic, gay, short-statured lyricist who — along with composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) — wrote over 20 stage musicals, which included some of the most enduring songs in the American songbook. Among them are “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn’t it Romantic?,” “Manhattan,” and the eponymous “Blue Moon.”

It’s March 31, 1943, the opening night of Oklahoma!, a landmark musical that would go on to alter the American theatre landscape. Some 80 years later, we know that. And so too, in a way, does Hart, although he’s too stubborn, insecure and self-involved to admit it.

Having seen a couple of out-of-town previews, he leaves the show early and heads to Sardi’s for the afterparty. And there he’ll stay for the rest of the film, downing shots of bourbon, sharing Casablanca quotes with bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), discussing writing with E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), and trying to impress the restaurant’s pianist, a soldier on leave named Morty (Jonah Lees).

Before the show lets out and the cast and crew arrive, he’s got a lot of bitchy things to say about Oklahoma! — including some zingers about that exclamation mark. But he’s mostly obsessed with a young Yale student named Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), who will be at the party; he’s brought along some presents for her.

It soon becomes clear that this infatuation is a distraction from his main concern: the fact that his friend and former writing partner has left him for someone else. As he self-pityingly tells Eddie, “We write together for a quarter century, and the first show he writes with someone else is going to be the biggest hit he ever had.”

This is a breakup story, but one between artists.

Robert Kaplow’s screenplay, inspired by actual letters between Hart and Weiland, is gleefully aware that it’s talk-heavy. And yet the film seldom feels like a play. We are always seeing things from the tortured point of view of Hart, who makes a witty, caustic guide as he gets drunker and more self-destructive.

The key to a film like this is making the central figure consistently compelling. And Hawke, whose working relationship with Linklater goes back decades, comes through with a near-legendary performance.

His Larry is both attractive and repellant. The actor is skillful enough to get some early exposition out of the way without it sounding like throat-clearing. And while it takes a few beats to get used to seeing him shorter and balder than his normal self, soon you simply accept it. “Nobody ever loved me that much,” he says, quoting Casablanca again, and you feel a lifetime of pain in the words.

Look at the lyrics to his best-known songs and you can feel the ache of loneliness and sting of unrequited love. In the songs, the feelings are graceful, above it all; in real life, they’re messier, more earthbound.

Kaplow and Linklater surround Hawke with lots of business. Delivery men come and go, bearing flowers. A cigarette girl sells her wares. As the Oklahoma! artists and opening night crowd begin to fill up the club, there’s excitement in the air; a press agent reads early reviews over the phone. When Larry spots the composers (Hammerstein is played by Simon Delaney), he’s obsequious in his praise, only to later tell his friend what he really thinks.

There are a couple of Easter eggs for nerds. Elizabeth introduces Larry to a Yale friend named George Hill (David Rawle), who later will add a middle name “Roy” and go on to direct such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Oscar introduces his protégé, a precocious kid named Stevie (Cillian Sullivan), who of course will grow up to become the preeminent musical theatre composer of the late 20th century. And when Larry talks with White, who in 1943 had yet to pen his classic children’s books, he mentions a pesky little mouse that keeps returning to his apartment, nicknaming him Stuart.

But ultimately, none of this matters; it’s just set dressing. Kaplow and Linklater know that the heart of the film lies in Hart’s two connections — one with a man he’s worked with for decades, the other with a woman who might just be able to inspire him to write something else.

The filmmaker cleverly withholds Rodgers’ side of the story until late in the film when, during a moving sequence on a staircase, Richard confronts Larry about how his drinking affected their most recent collaboration. He grudgingly agrees to revisit an earlier musical, A Connecticut Yankee, which we’ve been told will be the last thing Hart worked on before his death in November 1943. You believe it when Scott says “it’s not personal, it’s business.” The problem is, with Hart, everything’s personal.

And Qualley gets a lovely scene with Hawke performed in a closed-off cloak room, during which she opens up about her sad love life, relegating him to friend. You can see how thrilled Hart is to hear this intimate story, and yet you can also feel the crushing disappointment in his face. It’s a scene with the emotional heft of a Chekhov final act.

What also makes the film move so gracefully is the music, which adds a touch of nostalgia, romance and — well, Hart and soul — to the proceedings.

Blue Moon is currently playing in theatres.

Beyond Doubt

I’ve been meaning to catch something by the indie theatre company Wren Theatre for a while. I’m glad I caught one of the final performances of the company’s production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable (Rating: ✭✭✭), which closes this weekend at the Annex Theatre. See details here.

While director Tatum Lee’s production could be more nuanced, Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is so craftily constructed it still packs a punch. In a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, the stern principal Sister Aloysius (Bonnie Anderson) begins to suspect the charismatic teacher Father Flynn (Robert Notman) of inappropriate behaviour towards one of his male students.

Things are complicated by the fact that the boy, Donald, is the first Black student in the school and, frequently bullied, feels isolated. Father Flynn has provided some mentorship and protection to the boy. When when Donald’s mother (Jessica Myrie) is summoned by Sister Aloysius, she tells the nun that things should remain the same until the boy graduates in the spring.

While Shanley cleverly withholds information about whether Father Flynn is guilty or not, he also subtly critiques a patriarchal institution in which women — even one a school principal — have limited power and agency. He also suggests an environment in which a man maintaining his fingernails or taking three lumps of sugar in his tea might arouse suspicion.

Lee’s set fits beautifully in the atmospheric Annex Theatre, with its pair of wooden staircases and its stained glass window. A couple of banks of lockers add to the realism, and the fact that bricks are missing on a wall tells you a lot about the neighbourhood and upkeep of the building.

I wish the performances had a bit more variety. Anderson pitches her voice at the same irritated level throughout the show’s 90 minutes, and doesn’t allow much variation in scenes where there’s less at stake. Even her devastating final line, which should be filled with ambiguity, feels like a hurried afterthought.

Moffatt and especially Myrie could be more subtle and nuanced in their line readings. Only Notman, who gets two direct address monologues early on to have us connect with him, delivers a performance that can be read and interpreted in different ways.

While Liam Cardinell’s lighting helps carefully establish the mood and setting, his sound design can sound cloying and obvious.

So: a mixed production of a difficult, but still fascinating, play.

Ticket giveaway

So Sumi is giving away a pair of tickets to Sunny Drake’s CHILD-ish, receiving its Toronto premiere next week in a Tarragon production in association with The CHILD-ish Collective. The show opens on Thursday, October 30 and runs to November 16. See details here.

The premise is amusing. Forty children were interviewed about life, love and the world, and their verbatim words have been integrated into the script — but performed by adults.

Andrea Donaldson directs a terrific cast: Karl Ang (Monster), Janelle Cooper (Fall on Your Knees), Monique Mojica (My Sister’s Rage), Jordan Pettle (The Lehman Trilogy) and Asher Rose (Romeo and Juliet).

To win the tickets, answer the following question: Which actor plays the “interviewer” in CHILD-ish?

One winner, who must have a So Sumi membership (free or paid), will be randomly chosen from among the correct answers. Please send answers by Saturday, October 25, at 3 pm ET to SoSumiContact@gmail.com and put Ticket Contest in the subject heading. (Note: the company will do its best to accommodate the date of your request, but there are no guarantees.)