The setting is 1958 and NBC on the West Coast is trialling a late night celebrity interview television show.  Jack Parr (Ben Rappaport) will be the interviewer and the guest is famous pianist and acerbic, one-liner comedian, Oscar Levant (Sean Hayes of Will and Grace fame).  It is the start of the celebrity era where television is bringing personalities direct into people’s homes.

What the producers are unaware of is that Oscar Levant has been committed by his wife June (Rosalie Crutchley) to a psychiatric institution as an inpatient.  He has secured a four hour pass by saying that he wants to attend his daughter’s graduation and is accompanied by Alvin Finney (Daniel Adeosun) from the hospital. 

Doug Wright’s play is based on fact but the pass was used in reality to appear on a televised quiz not the late night talk show.  The talk show is of course more nerve wracking for the producers, one of which is Bob Sarnoff (Richard Katz), because of the opportunity live conversation television gives Oscar for an indiscreet joke or two.

Oscar Levant has started life as a concert pianist.  He knew George Gershwin (David Burnett) and played the music Gershwin composed and we hear Rhapsody in Blue and some of Porgy and Bess.  There is a short scene where, in the dressing room alone, Levant recalls a meeting with Gershwin and how Gershwin taunted him for not composing as great tunes. Gershwin died at 38 with a brain tumour.