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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a entertainment partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally shot placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of something rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the songs?

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