Friday, April 11, 2008

"Speak the speech, I pray you . . .

“Vex Not His Ghost.” By Susan Coyne. Dir. Peter Wellington. Perf. Martha Burns, Paul Gross, Don McKellar, Mark McKinney, Oliver Dennis, Susan Coyne, Stephen Ouimette, Catherine Fitch, and William Hutt. Slings and Arrows. Season 3, episode 2. Movie Central: Canada. 31 July 2006. DVD. Acorn Media, 2006-2007.
. . . trippingly on the tongue. And replace the artistic director.”

I’ve been mentioning some obscure derivitives, some of which haven’t yet been released. I thought I’d switch gears and mention a fabulous Shakespeare-related series that's out and readily-available:

Slings and Arrows.

The three-season Canadian television show follows the actors, directors, and staff of a Shakespeare festival as they go through three seasons.

In the first season—in the first show, even—the artistic director dies (that’s him in the coffin above) and is replaced by a new director—one who previously went insane while playing Hamlet under the previous director.

Follow that?

Anyway, the ghost of the first director (or is it a hallucination of the second director's imagining?) comes back to haunt (or is it to advise?) the second director.

Trust me, it’s great. It’s a little heavier on the heavy language than one likes for general audience viewing, but it’s full of marvelous lines, including this one from the ghost:

“Death virtually eliminates the need for pretense. There’s no one to impress.”

That from one of the most pretensious ghosts you’ll ever meet!

Links: Episode List at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

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