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Separating from the more prominent partner in a showbiz duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally shot standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.