“And I became real good friends with von Karajan,” Leonard Bernstein wrote to his wife, Felicia, in a letter from Switzerland in 1954, “whom you would (and will) adore. My first Nazi.” In 1956, Karajan was appointed principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1958, Bernstein would get sole directorship of the New York Philharmonic. Both became towering figures in classical music as well as apex rivals with wavy gray hair, though Bernstein’s wingspan included his gifts as a composer. It is a fact that the two met by chance in Vienna, at the Sacher Hotel, in April 1988. Karajan died in 1989; Bernstein, in 1990. The playwright Peter Danish, who wrote Last Call, learned of the meeting from a waiter in the hotel. It was the night, he was told, before Karajan’s last performances with the Vienna Philharmonic; the maestros had a drink in the Blaue Bar. Danish’s play is inspired by that meeting. And instead of casting two men, the actresses Lucca Züchner and Helen Schneider play Karajan and Bernstein, a fascinating counterpoint between self-possession and passion in their approaches to music (and life). Victor Peterson is the attentive waiter. The eminent Gil Mehmert directs con brio. —Laura Jacobs

Last Call is on Stage 5, at New World Stages.