Slings & Arrows is a Canadian television series set at the fictional New Burbage Festival, a Shakespearean festival similar to the real-world Stratford Festival. It stars Paul Gross, Stephen Ouimette and Martha Burns. Rachel McAdams appeared in the first season. The darkly comic series first aired on Canada’s Movie Central channels in 2003, and received acclaim in the United States when it was shown on the Sundance Channel two years later. Three six-episode seasons were filmed, with the final season airing in Canada in the summer of 2006 and in the United States in early 2007. Slings & Arrows was created and written by former Kids in the Hall member Mark McKinney, playwright and actress Susan Coyne, and comedian Bob Martin. All three appear in it as well. The entire series was directed by Peter Wellington Arrows centers around life at a fictional Shakespearean theatre festival in New Burbage, Canada. Each season focuses on The New Burbage Festival’s production of a different play. The themes of the play are often juxtaposed with personal and professional conflicts facing the festival’s cast and crew.
The show’s central characters are actor/director Geoffrey Tennant, New Burbage artistic director Oliver Welles, and actress Ellen Fanshaw, who seven years previously collaborated on a legendary production of Hamlet, Midway through one of the performances, Geoffrey suffered a nervous breakdown, jumped into Ophelia’s grave and then ran screaming from the theater. 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, Oliver sees Geoffrey on the news, chained to his theatre in protest. 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, Geoffrey is reluctantly forced to take over directing the festival’s latest production of Hamlet. Making this difficult are Jack Crew, 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, who finds herself falling for Jack. On the business side of the festival, New Burbage manager Richard Smith-Jones is seduced by one of his sponsors, American executive Holly Day who wants to remake New Burbage into a shallow, commercialized “Shakespeareville”.
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 commitment 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. 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, 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 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, copes with an influx of interns and begins a romance with playwright Lionel Train who is 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.
The third season follows the New Burbage production of King Lear. The cast of Macbeth returns home after a successful run of the production on Broadway, where an old friend of Ellen’s 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 as Lear, despite everyone’s fears that the role will kill him. As rehearsals continue, Charles terrorizes Sophie, 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 overshadows the troubled Shakespeare production. As things spiral out of control, Oliver returns to haunt and help, and Geoffrey seeks therapy from an unlikely source.
