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BLUE MOON · written by Robert Kaplow · 2025
Scene 16 of 26 · ≈ 3 min on screen · Act two
On the opening night of Oklahoma!, lyricist Lorenz Hart drinks through Sardi's while chasing one last renewal with Richard Rodgers and the young woman he adores, but both are already moving beyond him.
Hart leaves the show that displaced him for his Sardi's habitat, where wit and remembered greatness keep fear at bay.
Hart needs Elizabeth to choose him and Rodgers to need him, while drink offers the quicker form of consolation.
He admits White into his private mythology and steps into the Oklahoma! celebration to confront the people he cannot keep.
As Oklahoma!'s celebrants enter, Hart recounts touching Elizabeth at the Vermont cabin and convinces himself that tonight may be the 'another day' she promised.
Hart greets Rodgers and Hammerstein with extravagant praise, conceals his jealousy, and lets Rodgers pull him aside to discuss work.
Rodgers offers a Connecticut Yankee revival, but Hart's Marco Polo pitch and refusal of professional discipline expose the partnership's fracture and Hammerstein's succession.
This scene
HART
(to White)
What does Dick Rodgers know of Maine? He was bar-mitzvahed for Chrissake! How long are they gonna keep selling that fairy tale? Have faith, have hope, the dead will arise to comfort us! Like fuck they will. Give me another shot, Eddie. A real one. Join me for a shot, Andy? Please.
Eddie pours him a drink.
EDDIE
How ya holding up?
Hart is silent, then turns to White.
HART
...You know how in a marriage they say "for better or for worse"? I think in terms of my life, I've entered the "for worse" part, and it happened so quietly I didn't even recognize it.
(moves towards White)
Have you ever felt that way?
ANDY WHITE
Every day of my life.
HART
Sometimes I think:"Even God is finished with me" I've had my hits; I've loved a small, dear collection of people. And now he's turned the page. I feel...superannuated.
EDDIE
Superannuated...that's a good thing, isn't it?
HART
(turns towards him)
It means your dick doesn't work.
EDDIE
Must be why I don't know that word.
White raises an index finger.
ANDY WHITE
Put me on the list.
Beat.
ANDY WHITE (CONT'D)
You notice the birds are back in Central Park?
HART
What are you working on these days?
ANDY WHITE
...Children's book. Must have burned myself out writing those essays.... It's not going well. I think, as far as my writing goes, I've also entered the "for worse" part.
HART
What's your story about?
ANDY WHITE
I wish I knew...The journey everybody takes? Searching for what's perfect and unattainable?
HART
The ineffable!
ANDY WHITE
Probably too elusive an idea to put into a children's book.
HART
I have a line for you: "He chased her around the bed all night before concluding she was ineffable."
ANDY WHITE
Sure you don't mean "uneffable"?
HART
Better. You know, I'm in the park every morning, liberating this mouse I keep catching in my kitchen.
ANDY WHITE
Yeah?
HART
I have this little glass box that captures the mouse but doesn't kill him. And every morning I walk into my kitchen, and there he is, at the bottom of the refrigerator, my little brown mouse--happily eating the cracker I left for him. And every morning I carry him down to the park--open the box, he leaps out ten feet, scurries into the underbrush. And then the next morning, I'll be damned, he is back in the box!
ANDY WHITE
How do you know it's the same mouse?
HART
Well, he certainly looks the same. He has that same New-York look of doomed hopefulness. But how does he get up the 19 floors?
ANDY WHITE
Maybe he's tipping the doorman.
HART
You know, this morning he wasn't
there? Just the cracker lying in
the box. I actually missed the
little fella. I really did. I
think I've started to identify with
him.
ANDY WHITE
Does he have a name?
HART
I'm calling him Stuart.
ANDY WHITE
...With a "w" or a "u"?
HART
A "u." Nothing fancy. Just a
regular middle-class mouse.
More cheers from the dining room.
HART (CONT'D)
I think you'll have to excuse me.
All this jubilation has gone to my
bladder.
LANGNER (O.S.)
(reads)
Oscar Hamerstein the second brings
dramatic and imaginative--
(continues reading)
devising original dances that fit
the story. Oklahoma is fresh,
life, colorful, and enormous--
Hart moves towards the men's room.
White scribbles a note on his memo pad.
PT 2: