Glenn: A Play

David E. Kemp is head of the Drama Department at Queen’s University.

Glenn Gould captured the imagination of a worldwide audience with his
special brand of music-making. Viewed with suspicion by many critics
because of his eccentric performance style, Gould nevertheless made
recordings (especially of the music of Bach) that are now considered
definitive. In this play, Young explores the music, ideas, and
remarkable life of the iconoclastic pianist who was arguably the most
important artist Canada has ever produced.

Gould was untouched by the special excitement of performance before a
live audience. For most of his working life, his habitat was the sound
studio: darkness, mysterious apparatus, a few harsh utility lights,
blinking monitors. Appropriately, this is also the setting of the play.
In keeping with Gould’s complex personality, Young presents the great
pianist as four characters: prodigy, performer, perfectionist, and
puritan. The interactions and tensions between these characters give
Glenn much of its intellectual virility.

The play is neither easy to read nor easy to stage. It is complex,
multifaceted, and challenging. It functions on multiple levels with a
conscious disregard for chronology. Time is stretched, squeezed,
interrupted, reversed, and bent, an idea somewhat alien to mainstream
theatre audiences but very familiar to musicians. It seems only fitting
that so distinctive, and perhaps “difficult,” a personality as Glenn
Gould should be honored by this complex and intellectually challenging
play.