VIDEO: Garth Drabinsky is Focused on the Artistic Aspects of SOUSATZKA...Because He's Not Allowed to Touch the Money

Garth Drabinsky's SOUSATZKA is currently thrilling Toronto audiences and is steeped in Broadway-bound buzz. But would the producer even be able to leave Canada after spending five years as a guest of the taxpayer? The Agenda with Steve Paikin asks some of the easy questions, and a lot of the hard ones. Watch the interview below.

Drabinsky admitted to and served time in Canada for his part in a fraud at the now-defunct Livent Production Company. He was convicted in 2009 and is currently in court with the OSC seeking to overturn the proposed penalties in the case, which include banning him from trading securities in Ontario, and, perhaps more importantly, from a future as a producer of musicals.

Drabinsky is tight-lipped about his past and future endeavors, and he expresses a desire for SOUSATZKA to be seen on its own merits.

The world premiere engagement of Drabinsky's SOUSATZKA, with book by Craig Lucas, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr., based on the original novel "Madame Sousatzka" by Bernice Rubens, begins in Toronto on February 25. The show is expected to make its way to New York next October at a to-be-determined Broadway venue.

Directed by Adrian Noble and choreographed by Graciela Daniele, the production stars Victoria Clark, Montego Glover, Judy Kaye and Jordan Barrow. Based on the original novel Madame Sousatzka, written by Bernice Rubens, Sousatzka is set in London, England in 1982 and tells the story of a musical prodigy torn between two powerful women from vastly different worlds: his mother, a political refugee from South Africa and his piano teacher, a brilliant eccentric with a shattered past. These two proud, iconoclastic women must ultimately cross cultural and racial divides to find common ground, or else jeopardize the young musician's destiny.