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Separating from the better-known colleague in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes shot placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie informs us of something rarely touched on in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

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