Slings & Arrows

A Canadian show you've never seen, about life in a theater company. It's SO good.

From the e of Bay, here’s the link.

Slings & Arrows (2003-2006, three seasons, 18 episodes). Grade: A

“More people listen to the radio than go to the theater. And nobody listens to the radio.”

That's Geoffrey's problem. One of many, really.

He's directing Hamlet. The first time he's been back to this theater since, seven years ago, he suffered a catastrophic nervous breakdown, live onstage. In the middle of playing Hamlet.

His lead actor is clueless. His money man is a dolt. One of the actors is his ex. And his former Hamlet director is teasing him.

Oh — that former director is dead, by the way. It's his ghost that mocks. Because, it's Hamlet. You've got to have a ghost to start the plot.

It’s written by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin, and Kids In The Hall’s Mark McKinney. Coyne and McKinney have significant roles on the show, Martin a minor (but very sweet & kind) bit part.

It’s about a highly-respected Canadian theater company that's especially known for their Shakesperian productions; this was inspired by Canada's famed Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Almost everyone involved has tons of theater experience. Coyne was both an actor and writer at Stratford; so was Paul Gross, who plays Geoffrey. (And he DID star in Hamlet.) Gross is married to Martha Burns, who plays his ex; she was a Stratford star for years. Stephen Ouimette, the ghost haunting Geoffrey, was an actor and director there.

When I described this show to a friend, she said “Ugh! I used to know a lot of theater people. They were so incredibly annoying!”

Sure! And Slings & Arrows doesn't shy away from that.

There's a great moment in the third episode, at a party, where Geoffrey is literally fighting (using rapiers, of course), with another director he positively loathes. Their long-suffering stage manager just drunkenly blurts out:

“ACTORS! You're allll the same. You're all a bunch of selfish, filthy, whiiiiny children. Well, ffff**k you allll. F**K OFF, YOU F***ERS!”

The next day, she apologizes during rehearsal; the actors shrug it off. They know the stage manager is perpetually pissed at handling everyone's requests; they will keep making those requests. Because nobody else is anywhere near as good at holding everything together. That's how this works.

And that's this show. Nobody's perfect. The best of them are trying to be the best people, the best artists, they can be.

The first season ends with Hamlet going magnificently. All the arguments and stresses melt away; everyone’s worked together to pull off a last-second miracle.

Then the next season opens with Hamlet's final performance. Bored high-schoolers are shooting spitballs at the stage, and their pretentious teacher is taking a nap.

And Geoffrey's annoying all the actors by giving everybody performance notes, while what they want to do is finish the thing and hit the bar.

Because that’s Geoffrey! He’s a perfectionist, even when it doesn’t matter to anybody but him. As the series begins, he’s running a place called “Theatre Sans L’Argent” (Theater Without Money), and when he’s not plunging toilets, he’s bouncing rent checks.

Ellen, Geoffrey’s ex, is still a star at the Shakespeare festival, but she’s starting to get older. As she tells an up-and-comer, “first you’re the ingenue, then you’re the queen, then you’re the nurse.” Ellen is terrified of being cast as the nurse. But that day’s sure to come. So she’s doing things like dating a nice, dimwitted 20-something motocross racer.

And Oliver, Geoffrey’s former friend/director/mentor, is running the festival, but running on fumes. He’s lost any of the artistic drive he once had. Until he gets drunk and run over by a truck bearing the sign “Canada’s Best Hams.” (At which point he becomes a ghost, and loves arguing with Geoffrey over his directing choices.)

So yeah, these are all flawed people. But you end up liking them a lot. That’s half on the actors and half on Coyne/Martin/McKinney’s writing. They spent several years hashing out the structure and the characters of the series, before it began shooting. Wanting to both be funny and to show how being an artist can mess up one’s priorities. It’s something they each know, personally.

When Slings & Arrows won a slew of Gemini Awards (the Canadian Emmys/Oscars), it was as a drama, not a comedy. Which was correct. There’s a lot that’s absolutely hilarious here (especially Ouimette’s ghostly asides), yet the characters have emotional depth. People get their hearts broken. People watch their dreams fade; people die. It’s what happens if you watch enough plays, or meet enough people.

It’s also about the eternal battle between art and commerce. The festival is a nonprofit, but “nonprofit” can’t mean “operates at a loss.” And their audience is aging. That means regular ticket-buyers are dying; that means corporate sponsors want to back something with a younger demographic.

The head money man is Mark McKinney, and it’s such a juicy role for him. Kids In The Hall frequently made fun of blockhead TV executives. McKinney doesn’t go any easier on his character, Richard, here.

Richard is the closest thing to a bad guy Slings & Arrows has; he keeps utterly screwing up out of his own desperate wish to be respected. He dreams of being on the cover of a business magazine, yet he’s running a nonprofit (and he’s absolutely terrible at business). He really doesn’t do anything right, and expects his office manager (his co-writer Susan Coyne) to fix everything for him. Which she does. (Without being a sad sack; she just likes theater, likes helping run one, and is good at what she does.)

McKinney makes Richard a slime, yet he’s still awfully funny. Because, deep down, he’s not evil, just so… clueless. He doesn’t understand why these pretentious theater people prefer Shakespeare to Mamma Mia!. (And hey, depending on the production, I might side with him sometimes.) And he loved acting in school musicals! Why won’t the artists accept him as one of the cool kids?

I could go on and on about the other, smaller characters I loved watching here. But I’ll leave it at just one more, Oliver Dennis’s Jerry. He’s understudy to the star in Macbeth, and when called on to play the role, he screws up his lines (he’s been going through a rough patch at home). He barely makes it through the performance. Yet when another actor needs help? Jerry is right there in the wings cuing the lines. The guy’s a trouper.

All-in-all, this is close to my favorite thing I’ve even seen on TV. Deadwood is, too — but that show’s got a lot of violence and cruelty in it. (It’s what the characters struggle against and try to defeat.) I don’t watch to watch something with violence and cruelty right now. I want to watch something where, at worst, people are petty, and at best? They believe in doing something beautiful for the sake of doing it well.

Is it perfect? No — but no perfect movie or TV show exists. None! (Except maybe some short films.) Pick any favorite you have and I’ll find a flaw in it. Probably not a big one. But it’ll be there.

The flaws are admitted by Coyle, Martin, and McKinney, in a wonderful interview with critic Emily St. James. (Here’s Part One, here’s Part Two.) Some side plots weren’t developed as well as they’d hoped; a musical parody in Season 3 isn’t funny enough, or a good enough musical. (Did you want the authors of a great drama and great comedy to also write a great musical? Aren’t you greedy!)

This is essential reading for fans of the show. It makes clear how much they DID get right, just by working so collaboratively together as writers, and working with such a fantastic cast.

And two of their biggest problems ended up being two of the show’s strengths. The first was, they were never sure if they’d come back for another season. They wanted to do three, they’d planned out the plot for three, but they weren’t sure they’d get funding.

So, because of that, each season’s ending acts like almost a series ending, as well. And they’re all wonderful. If you make it through the first season, and watch the end, I promise you’ll want to watch more. Those season-ending episodes are emotional, hilarious — it’s the works.

The other problem was that Rachel McAdams left. She was going to play the young, hopeful ingenue who lets theater consume too much of her life; after one season, Hollywood came calling, and she had to be written out of the show. The romantic interests who replace her are played by lovely ladies, but they’re not actors in McAdams’s league (and the characters aren’t written as well).

Yet even that leads to a real gut-punch from her departure. The older Ellen tells McAdams not to leave for Hollywood, how it’s no place for an actor. (Then relents, because the McAdams character is leaving for love, not for fame.) Well, Hollywood was really no place for McAdams. Aside from one or two decent movies, she was largely in formula dreck (which of course isn’t her fault). And one of the best she’s been in, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, was an indie feature made in Canada.

Don’t go to Hollywood! It’s no place for an actor!

How’s the Shakespeare in the show about a Shakespeare festival? Eh — it’s hit and miss. Sometimes when the story slows down for a big onstage performance moment, I don’t really feel it. Yet the poetry is as gorgeous as ever. Late Canadian theater legend William Hutt is perhaps even greater describing Lear to the other actors than he is playing it. (Which he was famed for doing, at Stratford.) And when Paul Gross’s Geoffrey tries to animate and inspire his cast with his love of the text, it’s always softly beautiful. And there sure ain’t nothing wrong with that.

Why didn’t this become a bigger success? The kind of thing people discover, years later? Well, for one thing, all the Canadian stars. Only McKinney and McAdams would be familiar to Americans, and not even to most Americans at that.

But it’s not widely-known in Canada either (despite the awards). And I think that’s because it’s a show you have to invest in. You can’t discover it halfway through. You need to watch every episode, in order, for at least one season. Whereas something like Northern Exposure, which I also admire (until David Chase took over, damn him!) — that’s a show you could jump into at almost any point, as long as you knew the premise. Here, not so much.

I promise to wrap this up! Each season has a different opening ditty about that season’s showcase play. (First Hamlet, then Macbeth, then Lear.) This is the one I liked best:

(The laughing guy is the late Michael Polley; his daughter is actor and excellent film director Sarah Polley. She plays Lear’s Cordelia in the third season.)

For now, the entire series is available on YouTube, no commercials, in a decent-quality transfer. But the person who posted it does not own the rights. So it can disappear at any time. Like a ghost! And library DVDs are better for when you want to rewind to catch a funny line — which you will.

Aside from the interviews mentioned above, Emily St. James also did terrific episode-by-episode reviews of the show, for The A.V. Club. Which were easy to find and read in order. Except now The A.V. Club has decided its website should utterly suck. So it’s harder to find those articles now, and all the thoughtful comments are gone. (And showwriter Bob Martin said he loved the comments! So way to crap on that, A.V. Club!).

I realize that tech updates can muck up the way articles are sorted. But really, if you care about the good writing people have done for your site, you shouldn’t bury their posts.

So, here’s the links to St. James’s reviews. Season One: Episodes One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Season Two: Episodes One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Season Three: Episodes One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Give this a try, folks. Watch some of the episodes, and check out some of those reviews after you do. You might discover a new favorite here. Maybe! And if not, you can always go back to Mamma Mia!.