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Separating from the more famous partner in a showbiz duo is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also at times filmed standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his pride in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of something rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.