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Separating from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

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