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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a showbiz duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the land down under.