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Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona 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 correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie reveals to us something rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the Australian continent.