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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally shot standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.