The Unanswered Question

I had hoped to make opening night for my friend Martin Julien’s new play about Leonard Bernstein, ‘The Unanswered Question’, which premiers this week at the National Arts Centre, but unfortunately it just wasn’t in the cards.

If you are in the Ottawa area during the run of the show, and want to enjoy some music-related theatre, here’s the info:

www.nac-cna.ca/en/whatson/results.cfm?EventID=4774

This link includes a podcast which may take a minute or two to download, but is worth the wait for a glimpse ‘behind the scenes’ of a nuanced yet unflinching exploration of this towering musical figure of the 20th century.

(The podcast is longish - particular highlights for me were at 5′45″, 7′45″ and 17′45″).

Patrick Langston writes:

Music, love, human purpose: ultimately unfathomable issues, but ones which Toronto playwright Martin Julien tackles in The Unanswered Question, the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre production which opens Tuesday and runs until March 17. This world premiere burrows into the love triangle of the late American conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, his actress/pianist wife Felicia Montealegre, and Bernstein’s male lover Tom Cothran as the apparently indissoluble Bernstein-Montealegre match collapses. Nipping at the heels of the play is Bernstein’s abiding guilt that he was somehow responsible for his wife’s death in 1978. Tickets & times, 613-755-1111 or www.ticketmaster.ca

http://www.canada.com/cityguides/ottawa/story.html