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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture reveals to us something seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.