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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded 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 petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

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