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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with musician Richard 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 the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the break, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about something seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the Britain and on January 29 in the Australian continent.