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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a performance partnership is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.