The first season of Slings & Arrows told the story of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, a Canadian theatre company not unlike Ontario’s Stratford Festival. The season was entertaining, funny, and actually pretty sexy as the new artistic director (played by Paul Gross) dealt with his own ghosts (and emotional problems) while preparing a production of “Hamlet.” Season 2 (as contained on this new DVD set) picks up right where the first season ended. The young Hollywood star who played Hamlet is ready to move on, back to his film career. His Ophelia (Rachel McAdams), must decide whether to follow him to Hawaii. The resident leading lady (Martha Burns) is in the middle of an affair with a much younger moto-cross rider. CEO Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) is worried about funding, ticket sales, and rebranding. And the ghost of Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette) is still haunting the building.
I spent two nights binge watching the two DVDs that hold all six episodes of year two. I would have watched them all back-to-back had I not required sleep. This is an extraordinary series. Where else on TV can you hear so much Shakespeare?
This year it’s Macbeth, the cursed Scottish play, that is forced upon the troupe. The actors all accept the curse, and await the soon coming troubles. Geoffrey Tennant (Gross) doesn’t believe in curses (although, with the ghost of Welles hanging around him . . . one wonders why not) but he doesn’t like the play. Too much blood. He is given Welles’ notes, Welles’ stage design, even Welles’ choice for lead actor. And Welles’s ghost is there behind him, every step of the way.
Meanwhile, the director of a new production of Romeo & Juliet is the first victim of the curse and is replaced by Darren Nichols (Don McKellar reprising his role from Season 1). This time he wants to present this most romantic of plays as a post modern argument in gender-bending. Imagine actors in cages blandly reading their lines with all the passion drained. It’s almost terrifying.
And there’s a third play, by a Canadian writer who gets his ideas from whatever happened last night. He is constantly rewriting, until the new lady in his life recognizes too much of her own story on the stage. And . . . there’s the bizarre ad campaign for the rebranding, suggested by the equally strange marketing specialist Sanjay Ranier (played by Colm Feore.) The billboards, posters and TV ads are hilarious.
All this happens in one of the wittiest farces ever made for television. Every performer, from the leads to the extras wandering through the theatre, gives it their all. The language is wonderful as it echoes the Bard, and somehow appropriate when it echoes the street. Only six episodes? There must be a third season! Bring it on!
(Acorn Media, 2006)
[Update: The series remains available on DVD from the usual online sources, and to stream at Acorn TV.]
