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Breaking up from the more famous partner in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times shot positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of something infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.