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Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

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 Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of a factor seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.