Series satirizes theater actors' backstage antics

Ah Shakespeare. His plays are packed with political rivalries. Sexual treacheries. Ghosts. Witches. Sudden twists of outrageous fortune. Blood, sweat and buckets of tears.

And if you think those scripts are dramatic, hang around backstage at a theater performing the Bard's hallowed texts.

The sublimely funny, sharp and addictive Canadian TV series "Slings and Arrows" allows you that voyeuristic opportunity. What's more, it includes some marvelous snippets of Shakespearean drama in the bargain.

The Sundance Channel is airing the second season of the much-lauded show Sunday evenings, starting tonight.

If you didn't catch the initial season of "Slings and Arrows" (which is, sadly, not yet on DVD), no worries. Stay alert and you'll pick up quickly on the intrigues and personalities at the New Burbage Theatre Festival, a big, classical company clearly modeled on Canada's prominent Stratford Festival.

The first of the season's six episodes, "Oliver's Dream," lays out a pair of thorny challenges facing the Burbage.

New artistic director Geoffrey Tennant (rumpled, handsome and harried Paul Gross) must decide whether and how to produce his first "Macbeth," a Shakespeare tragedy that Oliver Welles (Geoffrey's late mentor and Burbage's prior director) had big plans for.

Meanwhile, company manager Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) is desperately hunting for the dough the cash-strapped Burbage needs to survive another season.

From these parallel plotlines unravel a bevy of colorful characters and bizarre developments.

They range from Geoffrey's resumption of an old love affair with a blithely narcissistic actress, to Richard's fall into the clutches of a flim-flam public-relations guru (portrayed with maniacal relish by Colm Feore). And the ghostly part: the attempts of the dead but overbearing Oliver (Stephen Ouimette) to direct "Macbeth" (a notoriously ill-fated work to tackle) from the grave.

Many details in the series will have drama professionals hooting — from the satanic machinations of a board president to the whacked-out pretensions of a director whose concept for "Romeo and Juliet" is pure theatrical Euro-trash.

"Only actors could have written this," notes series performer and writer Susan Coyne (one of several veteran stage thespians scripting the show).

"Actors always sit around, complaining and telling war stories. 'Slings and Arrows' comes from a lifetime of listening to these complaints."

For theater civilians, however. "Slings and Arrows" offers as much mirth and juicy satire of theater folk as, say, "Nip/Tuck" does of cosmetic surgeons, and "Six Feet Under" did of funeral directors.

The show also reminds U.S. viewers of the high caliber of Canada's acting pool (including Hollywood comer Rachel McAdams, who's in the first episode).

And along with the wicked jests, "Slings and Arrows" sneaks in occasional tastes of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (beautifully staged and performed, one might add).

It isn't much of the play. But it's enough to convince you why (to paraphrase Lady M.) so many theater hopefuls screw their courage to the sticking-place, to brave a life upon the wicked stage.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com