Toronto Star Classroom Connection

ART DELIGHTFULLY IMITATES LIFE IN ‘SLINGS & ARROWS’

Last week, Canadian TV star Paul Gross opened as “King Lear” at the Stratford Festival.

Twenty years ago, a Canadian TV comedy debuted in which Gross played a disgraced Shakespearean actor who takes on the artistic directorship of a theatre festival very much like Stratford.

I’m talking about “Slings & Arrows,” a gem of a show that I will never tire of recommending.

Gross’s Geoffrey Tennant — who, notoriously, had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a performance of “Hamlet” — returns to run the New Burbage Theatre Festival.

Geoffrey must contend not only with reviving an ailing artistic enterprise and his own fragile mental state, but with the ghost of the previous artistic director, played by brilliant real-life theatre artist Stephen Ouimette.

And then there are the sensitivities of the actors to manage, not least Geoffrey’s ex-girlfriend leading lady Ellen (Gross’s real-life wife, Martha Burns), and the tension between making art and making money, with general manager Richard Smith-Jones (co-creator Mark McKinney) crassly representing the latter interest.

Part of the fun of watching “Slings & Arrows” now is seeing all the Canadian actors in it who have gone on to wider acclaim, like Oscar winner Sarah Polley, Oscar nominee Rachel McAdams and Emmy winner Luke Kirby. But if you’re a Canadian theatre aficionado, you’ll also appreciate seeing pros like Ouimette, Colm Feore, Geraint Wyn Davies (who also opened at Stratford last week) and many more at work.

“Slings & Arrows” has heart, laughs and brains aplenty and, at just three seasons of six episodes each, it’s an easy binge — less time than a performance of “Hamlet.” “SLINGS & ARROWS” IS STREAMING ON ACORN AND CBC GEM.

CULTURE

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2023-06-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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