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Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a showbiz duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.