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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally recorded standing in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to feign all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Lorenz 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 further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the numbers?

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