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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a performance double act is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times filmed standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted 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 boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that 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 infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in Australia.