Slings, Arrows and Shakespeare

Slings, Arrows and Shakespeare April 22, 2016

As you will assuredly have noticed by now, this year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 1616 (April 23, in fact, which was also his birthday). I have nothing to add to all the high scholarship provoked by the commemoration, but it does give me an opportunity to share my enthusiasm for one of the very best series that has ever appeared on television, anywhere.

Between 2003 and 2006, Canadian television ran the series Slings and Arrows. There were three seasons, each of six episodes. The plot involved the fictitious New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, which bore no relation whatever to Canada’s actual Stratford Festival, honestly, no relation whatever. Each season concerned the production of one play, respectively Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, and each starred a galaxy of the best Canadian actors.

Slings and Arrows is the best thing you will ever see about the theater world, and its people, and it’s often riotously funny. Among the humor, though, you will see some astonishingly powerful performances and scenes. Out of nowhere, a random character will deliver a Macbeth soliloquy that may be the best rendering of that passage you have ever heard. The climax of the Macbeth involves a battle scene between two actors who are so furious with each other that you really believe they are trying to kill each other on the stage, regardless of the characters they are playing.

The King Lear concerned a very aged (fictional) theater legend who was close to death, but who was determined to perform the greatest Lear, ever. (Spoiler alert: and he does). The role was played by William Hutt, a mainstay of the Stratford Festival, who by this point was, well, a very aged theater legend who was close to death.

The Hamlet borrows the legendary moment when Keanu Reeves played Hamlet in Winnipeg in 1995 (and did a terrific job of it), and shows a fictitious American star playing that same role at the New Burbage.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, described Slings and Arrows as “so clever it left me with pure, distilled writer-envy.”

The boxed set is an essential possession.

By the way, I also treasure the Dr. Who episode, The Shakespeare Code, but that is another story.

 

 


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