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Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz double act is a risky business. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also at times filmed placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.