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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a performance duo is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

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