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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also at times shot placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the tunes?

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