More Slings and Arrows

As in Shakespeare's plays, "Slings and Arrows" has doubling: the continuing story of the troubled romance between a couple with a dramatic history (Geoffrey Tennant played by Paul Gross and Ellen Fanshaw played by Martha Burns--pictured here) plus a romance between different pairings of younger characters: an insecure young movie star and a young apprentice, both acting prominent roles in Hamlet for the first time; a young couple playing the title roles in Romeo and Juliet--star-crossed in their case because up until they began rehearsing together, he was strictly gay.)

There's multiple doubling of plots, as each series focuses on one play (Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear) while at least one other is also being rehearsed (Romeo and Juliet during Macbeth); beside the drama of producing the play, there's some crisis involving the theatre itself, usually involving its manager (Mark McKinney as Richard Thomas-Jones) that also includes a romantic or at least sexual entanglement.

There's also a Hamlet's ghost trying to direct the action (Stephen Ouimette as Oliver Welles) literally the Artistic Director who is killed early in episode one, and haunts the production, even appearing in it by furnishing his skull for Yorrick's. (He returns to haunt Macbeth; don't know about season 3.) Geoffrey won acclaim playing Hamlet but then went mad. To direct this new production he feigns madness--or does he? A question they're still asking about Hamlet.