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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance duo is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the venue 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 is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the US, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in Australia.