There are raves all over the cover of this DVD set. The New York Times calls Slings & Arrows “charming, complex, lively.” Newsday says “funny, romantic, sweet, thrilling.” And on it goes. Until I watched this DVD set I had never even heard of this programme. We don’t get the Sundance Channel (where the show aired) on the backwater cable provider that services our area. When I plugged in disc one and saw all these wonderful Canadian actors, I was thrilled!
I’m sorry I missed it on its original run, but I’m glad of the opportunity to catch up. The series is a light-hearted but perceptive look at a major festival theatre. Think Stratford, or the Shaw Festival if you live in the Great White North. The New Burbage Shakespearean Festival, under the direction of Oliver Welles, launches its new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production is expensive, lavish, but artistically bereft. Meanwhile Geoffrey Tennant (Welles’s estranged protege, a brilliant actor and director who suffered a nervous breakdown seven years earlier in a Welles’ directed production of Hamlet) is forging on with a production of The Tempest, even though the bank is closing down his company. New Burbage’s resident diva was Tennant’s lover. The young understudy is in love with the Hollywood star flown in for the lead in the next play. The conniving board member beds and manipulates the Theatre manager. Oliver Welles . . . is killed by a truck full of pigs as he lies on the road in a drunken stupor.
Got that?
Do not think that this is the end. It’s only the beginning. Oliver returns to haunt Tennant (who is given the post of Interim Artistic Director) in ghostly form. He haunts many of the other actors and staff by requesting as his last wish that his head be rendered, and his skull used in all future productions of Hamlet!
All this action is presented with panache by the marvelous cast. Paul Gross is Geoffrey Tennant, handsome, dashing, and still a little bit disturbed. Rachel McAdams is the comely and naive young understudy, innocent and eager. Don McKellar plays Tennant’s nemesis, the director who is hired to turn Hamlet into a smelly, swampy, pyrotechnics display. And Stephen Ouimette makes a ghostly spectacle of himself as Welles. His face is a rubbery wonder. Martha Burns, Mark McKinney and Jennifer Irwin also turn in fine performances. And the minor roles are filled to perfection by a cast of professionals. The two gay actors who sing the opening song and act as a virtual Greek chorus are a hoot!
The series has romance, lust, action, adventure, and loads of Shakespearean quotes (both from the rehearsals and performances of the plays, and also skillfully interwoven into the dialogue of the teleplay.) It even has a mention of my alma mater McMaster University, which lends New Burbage some theatrical equipment. Slings & Arrows is witty, clever, intelligent, and entertaining, and it’s well represented on this two disc DVD set. There are extended and deleted scenes, production notes, and a blooper reel, but the main attraction is the six episodes of Season One. I am salivating as I wait for the release of Season Two!
(Acorn Media, 2006)
[Update: The series remains available on DVD from the usual online sources, and to stream at Acorn TV.]
