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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us something rarely touched on in pictures about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.