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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a performance double act is a risky business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.