Last Call

Peter Danish's drama imagines a conversation between two of the 20th century great classical conductors, the Jewish-American Leonard Bernstein and the German ex-Nazi Herbert von Karajan, over drinks at a hotel in Vienna. This production, directed by the prominent German director Gil Mehmert, avoids the pitfalls of verisimiltude by casting two German actresses as the conductors: Lucca Züchner as Karajan and American-born Helen Schneider—who played Norma in the German premiere of Sunset Boulevard—as Bernstein.