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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also at times recorded positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his pride in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.