From Slings to Stratford: What the TV Series Reflects About Real Life

Riffs on Shakespeare: Slings and Arrows
The movie network
the national post

The powers at the Shaw and Stratford festivals must sometimes wish life could be more like Slings & Arrows. The third season of this delightfully incestuous TV series ended last Monday with some choice slices of wish-fulfillment. The season centred on the attempts of Geoffrey, artistic director of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, to mount a production of King Lear starring Charles Kingman, an aged actor who had dreamed his entire life of playing the king. One thing Charles neglected to mention until after signing the contract was that he was dying of cancer. The combined effects of his condition and his drug regime led to the cancellation of not one but two first nights and finally to the canning both of the show and of Geoffrey himself. At the last minute, however, Charles rallied and the company, in defiance of the new Burbage regime, mounted Lear for one night only, in a church hall. Everyone wept, Charles got through the performance triumphantly and died immediately afterward in his dressing room, crowning his career as he would have wished.

There were, of course, overtones. The fragments of Kingman's King Lear that we got to see and hear were sublime. This was not surprising since Charles was played by William Hutt, and for most Canadian theatregoers -- with no disrespect to the other fine actors who have recently played it (Christopher Plummer), are about to play it (William Webster) or are rumoured to be playing it (Brian Bedford) -- Hutt is Lear. He has played the role three times at Stratford alone, the last time when he was pushing Lear's own age of 80, a rare achievement indeed.

Obviously Hutt isn't Charles, if only because he survived playing Lear to play Charles; still, we never lost the delighted sense of who we were watching. He was wonderful as the old actor, his comic timing intact, and still had some surprises to spring as the king. In one scene, a rehearsal of the great "reason not the need" speech, he really let fly at the actress playing Regan. She was shocked; the rest of the company gazed on apparently fascinated but actually aghast. It turned out Charles had gone off his meds, but the rage was still perfect Lear. I expected Geoffrey to tell him to keep it in, and was very disappointed when he didn't.

It's uncertain how closely the New Burbage is based on Stratford. Obviously there are resemblances. This season even had one of the senior actors talking about how he had been with the operation ever since it started in a tent. I don't know how long ago that was supposed to have been but, though the Burbage now apparently boasts both a main and a studio stage, its repertoire seems no larger than Stratford's was in its first season under canvas 53 years ago. Just two shows: Lear and a solemn new musical called East Hastings, a low-rent Rent that became a surprise hit. Somewhat confusingly, we were asked both to laugh at the awfulness of the musical itself, courtesy of some dead-on parodies, and to sympathize with the author of it, when an incompetent director (Don McKellar, eyes glinting with charlatanry and pretention) set about making it even worse.

So, a great Shakespearean actor, with a matchless blend of experience and freshness, shows how it should be done, and passes on the torch. A play works magically in an improvised set-up, away from big stages and big organizations, and everyone loyally rallies round. (Shades of The Cradle Will Rock.) The philistines prosper materially, but inside they really hate themselves. I laughed and cried in all the right places. Like I said, wish- fulfillment.

In the real world, I doubt that the salvation of our classical festivals lies in their taking vows of poverty. They need to be richer, both in the scope of what they do and in the amount of funding they receive to do it. I don't think they have to give up doing musicals; I would like them to stop feeling obliged to do musicals. The well- documented decline in tourism, meaning American tourism, is a setback but it could also be an opportunity; it seems ridiculous, after all, for Canada's major institutional theatres (they aren't national theatres) to measure their success on their appeal to foreigners. Their primary aim should be to make Canadians happy; if that's achieved, and properly reported and promoted, the visitors will come back. (Some might even come from Europe, where they are gluttons for it.)

It would be nice to see our marketers of culture, especially in Ontario, treat our theatre as something of international importance, rather than something to be jokily apologized for. Much cultural advertising seems to be saying not "you will enjoy this," but "don't worry, it won't hurt." Stratford and Shaw have in fact much to shout about. This year, Stratford's Duchess of Malfi and the Shaw's Rosmersholm are revelatory reimaginings of great, tough plays.

And we should certainly be celebrating our actors, what I call the super-ensemble that stretches out from Toronto, through Ontario and across the country. Even into TV: It was very much in evidence in Slings & Arrows, which, apart from those already mentioned, featured scintillating work from Stephen Ouimette and from Susan Coyne who, as writer, actress and producer, accumulated a dizzying five credits per episode. I'm taking it for granted, by the way, that this season has been the last; there was something very epiphanic about it. But if Geoffrey and his team come back and retake New Burbage from the usurper, I think the play they should be looking at is Richard III.