Slings and Arrows
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Slings and Arrows is a Canadian single-camera comedy series set at a troubled Shakespearean festival many believe is modelled after the one held in the Southwestern Ontario town of Stratford. The program first aired in Canada in 2003, and received wide acclaim in the United States when it arrived on Sundance Channel two years later. It was co-created by Kids in the Hall member Mark McKinney, Canadian playwright Susan Coyne, and the Tony-award winning creator of The Drowsy Chaperone, Bob Martin. All three creators appear in the series. The program's stars are Paul Gross, Stephen Ouimette, and Martha Burns.
It originally aired on The Movie Network in Eastern and Central Canada and Movie Central west of Ontario, and is currently going into its third season.
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[edit] Plot Summary
[edit] Season One
The show's central characters are Geoffrey Tennant (Gross), Oliver Welles (Ouimette), and Ellen Fanshaw (Burns), all actors.
Seven years previously, Geoffrey and Ellen, then in a relationship, were co-starring as Hamlet and Ophelia in a critically-acclaimed production in the fictional New Burbage, Ontario. Geoffrey suffered a nervous breakdown midway through a performance and was committed to a psychiatric institution.
Geoffrey, after his release, has been running his own theatre company ("Theatre Sans Argent," French for "Theatre Without Money) in Toronto, putting on plays with no money that nobody comes to see. As we meet him, his landlord is preparing to evict his company from their theatre for non-payment of rent.
Oliver, meanwhile, still directing Ellen, has made the New Burbage theatrical festival a success while gradually commercializing his productions and theatre. After drinking heavily at a cast party following a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oliver is struck and killed by a truck full of hams. His last words were an argument over the telephone with Geoffrey, his former friend and protege.
Geoffrey goes to see Oliver's body and finds that he is being haunted by Oliver's ghost, in parallel both to Hamlet and to Gross's former character of Benton Fraser. He is also hired by the New Burbage festival's board of directors to take Oliver's old role and to take up where Oliver left off: preparing a staging of Hamlet.
Other plots include the scheming of manager Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) and American executive Holly Day (Jennifer Irwin) to fully co-opt the festival and remake it as a shallow, superficial "Shakespeareville"; and apprentice actress Kate McNab (Rachel McAdams)'s romance with American film star Jack Crew (Luke Kirby), an action hero Oliver hired to play the title role in Hamlet before his death.
[edit] 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 committment from his actors, suggests downsizing the company. A new actor, Henry Breedlove, 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 hires an avant-garde advertising agency, Froghammer, to promote and rebrand the festival. Froghammer launches a series of shock advertisements and manipulates Richard into accepting them. Meanwhile, Geoffrey obsesses over directing the play, antangonizes his cast and crew, and starts seeing Oliver's ghost again, all of which make Ellen fear for his sanity.
[edit] DVD Releases
| DVD Name | Region 1 | Region 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
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Slings And Arrows Season 1 | June 27, 2006 | N/A |
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Slings And Arrows Season 2 | October 24, 2006 | N/A |
[edit] External links
- Slings and Arrows at the Internet Movie Database
- Bob Martin Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing, June 2006
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