Slings and Arrows
Encyclopedia
For the monologue in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, see To be, or not to be
To be, or not to be
"To be, or not to be" is the opening phrase of a soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet , Act III, Scene 1. It is the best-known quotation from the play and probably the most famous in world literature but there is disagreement on its meaning, as there is of the whole speech.- Text :This...

.


Slings and Arrows is a Canadian TV series set at the fictional New Burbage Festival, a Shakespearean festival similar to the real-world Stratford Festival. The program stars Paul Gross
Paul Gross
Paul Michael Gross is a Canadian actor, producer, director, singer and writer born in Calgary, Alberta. He is known for his lead role as Constable Benton Fraser in the television series Due South as well as his 2008 war film Passchendaele, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in...

, Stephen Ouimette
Stephen Ouimette
Stephen Ouimette is a Canadian actor and director, born and raised in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, and a graduate of the University of Windsor...

 and Martha Burns
Martha Burns
Martha Burns is an award-winning Canadian actress known for her stage work and youth outreach in Ontario and her leading role as Ellen Fanshaw in the TV dramedy series Slings and Arrows.Burns was born 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba...

.

The blackly comic series first aired on Canada's Movie Central
Movie Central
Movie Central is a Canadian English language Category A premium television service. Movie Central is designated to operate west of the Ontario-Manitoba border, including the territories...

 and The Movie Network
The Movie Network
The Movie Network is a Canadian English language Category A premium television service, owned by Astral Media. The service is licensed to operate east of the Ontario-Manitoba border, excluding the territories...

 channels in 2003, and received acclaim in the United States when it was shown 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.

Slings and Arrows was created and written by former The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 on CBS and HBO in the United States...

 member Mark McKinney
Mark McKinney
Mark Douglas Brown McKinney is a Canadian comedian and actor, best known for his work in the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. Following the run of their television series and feature film , he went on to star in Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 1997...

, playwright and actress Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne is a Canadian writer and actress, best known as one of the co-creators and co-stars of the award-winning Slings and Arrows, a TV series which ran 2003–06 about a Canadian Shakespearean theatre company...

, and comedian Bob Martin
Bob Martin (comedian)
Bob Martin is a writer, actor, and comedian from Toronto, Ontario, Canada born in England circa 1963. He has both performed in and written many TV shows. He also provides the voice of Cuddles the comfort doll on the Canadian TV show Puppets Who Kill, aired on The Comedy Network.He starred in the...

, the Tony-award winning co-creator of The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...

. All three appear in the series as well. The entire series was directed by Peter Wellington
Peter Wellington (director)
Peter Wellington is a Canadian film and television director, best known for the films Joe's So Mean to Josephine, for which he won the Claude Jutra Award in 1996, and Luck....

.

Season One

The show's central characters are actor/director Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross
Paul Gross
Paul Michael Gross is a Canadian actor, producer, director, singer and writer born in Calgary, Alberta. He is known for his lead role as Constable Benton Fraser in the television series Due South as well as his 2008 war film Passchendaele, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in...

), New Burbage artistic director Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette
Stephen Ouimette
Stephen Ouimette is a Canadian actor and director, born and raised in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, and a graduate of the University of Windsor...

), and actress Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns
Martha Burns
Martha Burns is an award-winning Canadian actress known for her stage work and youth outreach in Ontario and her leading role as Ellen Fanshaw in the TV dramedy series Slings and Arrows.Burns was born 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba...

), who seven years previously collaborated on a legendary production of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

. 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, "Théâtre 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
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

, 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 bearing the slogan "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. After clashing with an old rival, Darren Nichols (Don McKellar
Don McKellar
-Personal life:McKellar was born in Toronto, Ontario to a lawyer father and teacher mother. He attended Glenview Senior Public School, Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute and later studied English at the University of Toronto's Victoria College...

), Geoffrey is reluctantly forced to take over directing the festival's latest production of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

. Making this difficult are Jack Crew (Luke Kirby
Luke Kirby (actor)
-Early life:Luke was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to two American expatriates. His mother is from Brooklyn, New York, and his father grew up "along the eastern seaboard". His parents moved from New York City, New York, to Canada in 1974...

), the insecure American film star cast as Hamlet; Geoffrey's former lover Ellen, who is playing Gertrude and dating a much younger man; and Oliver, now haunting both Geoffrey and the festival as a ghost. Also in the play is apprentice actress Kate (Rachel McAdams
Rachel McAdams
Rachel Anne McAdams is a Canadian actress. After graduating from a theatre program at York University, Toronto in 2001, she worked steadily as an actress until finding fame in 2004 with starring roles in teen comedy Mean Girls and romantic drama The Notebook...

), who finds herself falling for Jack.

On the business side of the festival, New Burbage manager Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney
Mark McKinney
Mark Douglas Brown McKinney is a Canadian comedian and actor, best known for his work in the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. Following the run of their television series and feature film , he went on to star in Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 1997...

) is seduced by one of his sponsors, American executive Holly Day (Jennifer Irwin
Jennifer Irwin
Jennifer Irwin is a Canadian actress best known for her roles as Linda on Still Standing and as Maria Ganitisis in the Molly Shannon comedy Superstar....

) who wants to remake New Burbage into a shallow, commercialized "Shakespeareville".
Title Episode Airdate
"Oliver's Dream" #1, 101 November 3, 2003
"Geoffrey Returns" #2, 102 November 10, 2003
"Madness in Great Ones" #3, 103 November 17, 2003
"Outrageous Fortune" #4, 104 November 24, 2003
"A Mirror up to Nature" #5, 105 December 1, 2003
"Playing the Swan" #6, 106 December 8, 2003

Season Two

The second season follows the New Burbage production of Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

.

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
Geraint Wyn Davies
Geraint Wyn Davies is a British-Canadian-American actor.He was born on 20 April 1957 in Britain, at Swansea. He was the son of a Congregationalist preacher...

), 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 of "The Scottish Play
The Scottish play
The Scottish Play and the Bard's play are euphemisms for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first is a reference to the play's Scottish setting, the second a reference to Shakespeare's popular nickname. According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth...

").

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
Colm Feore
Colm Feore is an American-born Canadian stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Feore was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Irish parents who lived in Ireland for several years during Feore's early life. The family subsequently moved to Windsor, Ontario, where Feore grew up.After graduating...

), 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
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

in which the actors don't touch or even look at each other, much to the chagrin of the couple playing the lead roles. The festival's administrator, Anna Conroy (Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne is a Canadian writer and actress, best known as one of the co-creators and co-stars of the award-winning Slings and Arrows, a TV series which ran 2003–06 about a Canadian Shakespearean theatre company...

), 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.
Title Episode Airdate
"Season's End" #7, 201 June 27, 2005
"Fallow Time" #8, 202 July 4, 2005
"Rarer Monsters" #9, 203 July 11, 2005
"Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair" #10, 204 July 18, 2005
"Steeped in Blood" #11, 205 July 25, 2005
"Birnam Wood" #12, 206 August 1, 2005

Season Three

The third season follows the New Burbage production of King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

.

The cast of Macbeth returns home after a successful run of the production on Broadway, where an old friend of Ellen's (Janet Bailey) 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
William Hutt (actor)
William Ian DeWitt Hutt, was a Canadian actor of stage, television and film. Hutt's distinguished career spanned more than fifty years and won him many accolades and awards...

) as Lear, despite everyone's fears that the role will kill him. As rehearsals continue, Charles terrorizes Sophie (Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley is a Canadian actress, singer, film director, and screenwriter. Polley first attained notice in her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series, Road to Avonlea...

), 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.
Title Episode Airdate
"Divided Kingdom" #13, 301 July 24, 2006
"Vex Not His Ghost" #14, 302 July 31, 2006
"That Way Madness Lies" #15, 303 August 7, 2006
"Every Inch a King" #16, 304 August 14, 2006
"All Blessed Secrets" #17, 305 August 21, 2006
"The Promised End" #18, 306 August 28, 2006

DVD releases

On February 5, 2008, Acorn Media released Slings and Arrows: The Complete Collection, a 7-disc box set featuring all 18 episodes of the series as well as bonus features.

On October 26, 2010, Acorn Media re-released the Complete Collection in Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...

 format.
DVD Name Ep# Release Dates
Season 1 6 June 27, 2006
Season 2 6 August 24, 2006
Season 3 6 July 3, 2007
The Complete Collection 18 February 5, 2008

External links

  • Bob Martin - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org
    American Theatre Wing
    The American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...

    , June 2006
  • Slings & Arrows- NPR Weekend Edition interview at NPR.org, July 21, 2007
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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