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Separating from the better-known colleague in a performance partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also occasionally filmed placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about something infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the tunes?

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