Slings & Arrows
Slings and Arrows is a Canadian TV series set at the fictional New Burbage Festival, a troubled Shakespearean festival similar to the real-world Stratford Festival. The program stars Paul Gross, Stephen Ouimette and Martha Burns.
The blackly comic series first aired on Canada's Movie Central and The Movie Network channels in 2003, and received wide acclaim in the United States when it was shown there on the Sundance Channel two years later. Three seasons of six episodes each were filmed in total, with the final season airing in Canada in the summer of 2006 and in the United States in early 2007.
The show was co-created and co-written by former Kids in the Hall member Mark McKinney, playwright and actress Susan Coyne, and comedian Bob Martin, the Tony-award winning co-creator of The Drowsy Chaperone. All three appear in the series as well.
Plot Summary
Season One
The show's central characters are actor/director Geoffrey Tennant (Gross), New Burbage artistic director Oliver Welles (Ouimette), and actress Ellen Fanshaw (Burns), who seven years previously collaborated on a legendary production of Hamlet. Midway through one of the performances, Geoffrey suffered a nervous breakdown, jumped into Ophelia's grave and then ran screaming from the stage. After that, he was committed to a psychiatric institution.
When the series begins, Geoffrey is in Toronto, running a small company, "Theatre Sans Argent" (French for "Theatre Without Money") on the verge of being evicted. Oliver and Ellen have stayed at New Burbage, where Oliver has gradually been commercializing his productions and the festival. On the opening night of the New Burbage's A Midsummer Night's Dream Oliver sees Geoffrey on the news, chained to his theater. Heavily drunk, Oliver calls Geoffrey from a payphone and they argue about the past. Oliver then passes out in the street and is run over and killed by a truck carrying Canada's best hams.
Geoffrey's blistering eulogy at Oliver's funeral about the state of the festival leads to him being asked to take over Oliver's job on a temporary basis. He passes on the job of directing the new production of Hamlet, however, and reluctantly accepts an old rival, Darren Nichols (Don McKellar), for the job. Darren's vision includes flames and horses, however, and one short duel later, Darren is out and Geoffrey has to take on the play after all. Complicating matters for Geoffrey are his former lover Ellen, now playing Gertrude and dating a much younger man, and Jack (Luke Kirby), the American film star hired to play Hamlet. Commenting acidly on all of this is Oliver, who has begun haunting Geoffrey as a ghost.
In the two other main subplots, the festival's business manager, Richard Smith-Jones (McKinney) is seduced by American executive Holly Day (Jennifer Irwin) into trying to remake New Burbage into a shallow, commercialized "Shakespeareville" and apprentice actress Kate (Rachel McAdams) finds herself falling for Jack.
Season Two
The second season follows the New Burbage production of Macbeth.
Richard is desperate for money to keep the company going, and Geoffrey, frustrated over what he sees as a lack of commitment from his actors, suggests downsizing the company. A new actor, Henry Breedlove (Geraint Wyn Davies), arrives to star in a production of Macbeth, which Geoffrey is reluctant to direct because of its supposed difficulty (though he doesn't believe in the curse).
Richard finds funding in the form of a government grant that comes with a catch -- it may be used only for "rebranding." So, Richard hires an avant-garde advertising agency, Froghammer, to promote and rebrand the festival. Sanjay (Colm Feore), the head of Froghammer, launches a series of shock advertisements and manipulates Richard into accepting them.
Elsewhere at the festival, Darren has returned from an artistic rebirth in Germany to direct a version of Romeo and Juliet in which the actors don't look at each other, much to the chagrin of the couple playing the lead roles. The festival's administrator, Anna Conroy (Susan Coyne), copes with an influx of interns and begins a romance with a playwright doing a reading at the festival.
Ellen undergoes a tax audit, in preparation for which she is able to explain the "business purpose" of such theatrical necessities as lipstick and a push-up bra.
Meanwhile, Geoffrey obsesses over directing Macbeth, antagonizes his cast and crew, and starts seeing Oliver's ghost again, all of which make Ellen fear for his sanity.
Season Three
The third season follows the New Burbage production of King Lear.
The cast of Macbeth returns home after a successful run of the production on Broadway, where an old friend of Ellen's tells her to think about moving beyond New Burbage. As Richard tries to cope with being a success, Anna must deal with a group of stranded musicians and Darren is back in town, this time to direct a new musical, East Hastings.
Geoffrey, meanwhile, has cast an aging theatre legend, Charles Kingman (William Hutt) as Lear, despite everyone's fears that the role will kill him. As rehearsals continue, Charles terrorizes Sophie (Sarah Polley), the actress playing Cordelia. Sophie is also involved in the rivalry between the young actors in Lear and the young actors in the musical, whose success soon outshadows the troubled Shakespeare production.
As things spiral out of control, Oliver returns to haunt and help, and Geoffrey seeks therapy from an unlikely source.
Trivia
The title is taken from Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1) in the famous soliloquy: "To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"
The location New Burbage seems to be in reference to Richard Burbage the main actor in Shakespeare's company the King's Men.
Paul Gross is most famous for the role of Benton Fraser in the series Due South. Benton, like Geoffrey, is haunted by a ghost, in this case his father.
Several of the cast and creators have longstanding connections with each other and with the Stratford Festival and in many cases are playing parts that mirror their real-world involvement with the theatre. Oliver, the New Burbage director, is played by Ouimette, who has directed at Stratford. In the third season, aging Canadian theatre legend Charles is played by Hutt, himself an aging Canadian theatre legend whose connection with Stratford goes back to its first year. In addition, Gross, Burns and Coyne have all acted at Stratford -- Gross ironically in the title role of Hamlet.
Gross and Burns, who play Geoffrey and Ellen, are married and, like their fictional counterparts, met while acting opposite each other. McKellar, who plays Darren, the avant-garde theatre director, is an indie film director and screenwriter who co-wrote Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which starred Feore. Polley, who plays Sophie in the third season, is the daughter of Michael Polley, who plays one of the two older gay character actors who provide dry commentary throughout the series (and sing the credits). Finally, Coyne and Burns are old friends who helped co-found Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre Company.
The Drowsy Chaperone, the first Canadian musical to become a Broadway success in decades, was penned by some of the same people responsible for Slings and Arrows. Music and lyrics were by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morisson, who wrote the witty title credit songs for Slings and Arrows, and the book was written by McKellar and Martin. Martin also starred in the show as the Man in the Chair. The third season of Slings and Arrows alludes to the Drowsy Chaperone success with subplots involving Canadians on Broadway and developing a new musical.
DVD Releases
| DVD Name | Region 1 | Region 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The First Season | Slings and Arrows, Season 1 | June 27 2006 | N/A |
| The Second Season | Slings and Arrows, Season 2 | October 24 2006 | N/A |
| The Third Season | Slings and Arrows, Season 3 | July 3 2007 | N/A |
External links
- Slings and Arrows at IMDb
- Bob Martin - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, June 2006
- Slings & Arrows- NPR Weekend Edition interview at NPR.org, July 21, 2007