Slings and Arrows, episode 2...

[fajrdrako]

Hiding out from the heat last night, I visited maaseru to watch the second episode of season 3 of Slings and Arrows, "Vex Not His Ghost". If you don't know it: it's a Canadian show starring Paul Gross, with the motto, "The real show is backstage". Gross plays Geoffrey Tennant, the Artistic Director of the fictional New Burbage Theatre Festival. (Which looks a heck of a lot like Stratford.)

In this new episode, Geoffrey, while trying to direct King Lear, goes to a therapist to discuss his problems of crying jags and impotence, and his resident ghost Oliver turns up, as suicidal as a ghost can be, seeing no value any more in theatre. And Richard - who's supposed to be worrying about money matters - has got himself involved with the staging of the musical and just may have found the boyfriend he doesn't know he was looking for.

I have always loved this show but this season seems particularly clever - maybe because it's playing less for the laughs and more for the idiosyncracies of theatre life. Not entirely comedy or drama but somewhere in between.