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Breaking up from the better-known collaborator in a showbiz double act is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes shot placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point 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 unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who would create the tunes?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, November 14 in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.