Showtimes October 24 - 30:

The lyricist Lorenz Hart’s contributions to the Great American Songbook cycle are the stuff of legend. Yet, in 1943, only months before he died from pneumonia -- a consequence of heavy drinking -- Hart’s partnership with Rodgers was on the rocks. Rodgers had first paired up with Oscar Hammerstein II, and their musical Oklahoma! was reinvigorating and all but reinventing narrative musical theater.

Richard Linklater’s luminous, erudite drama imagines a loquacious Hart (Ethan Hawke on the night of Oklahoma’s permiere, holed up at Sardi’s and moving through various stages of grief, acceptance, and blistering wit when faced with Broadway’s new world order. “You know how in marriage they say ‘for better or for worse?’ I think, in terms of my life, I have entered the ‘for worse’ part, and it happened so quietly I didn’t even recognize it.” Hawke delivers a tour de force performance in the role, leaving you hanging on every word. And the film features stellar supporting work from Andrew Scott, Margaret Quallet, and Bobby Cannavale. A surprising yet entirely fitting addition to Richard Linklater’s oeuvre, this is a nostalgic film about the inevitable passage of time, and the feeling of being left behind by those stuck in its folds.

(US, Ireland / 2025 / Directed by Richard Linklater)
R / 1 hr 40 mins