Stage & Screen
Slings & Arrows, Season One (2003)
directed by Peter Wellington
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Esteban
The vengeful ghost of drama looming quiet at the shoulder of Slings & Arrows suffers the insistent self-assurance-cum-self-defense of theater types lightly, while the world (that is, me) looks at such irrational happiness among the backstage banter of "real" actors as a roomful of egoists gone mad. The corporate subplot is so slight, only Tommy Lee Jones's Axeman knows from which meager hell these faint spirits issue forth, and all that's left are tedious spats bred from shallow misunderstandings. I am a non-believer in the stage; give me the movies and save the fatuous machinations of the merry few for wide-eyed, sentimental high schoolers.
But no, that's too bitter. The show's heart and humor are in the right place, but all that lovely Shakespeare (in the end, the written word) is just a contrast to the clubby "dramedy" that I never feel (or felt) a part of.
directed by Peter Wellington
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Esteban
The vengeful ghost of drama looming quiet at the shoulder of Slings & Arrows suffers the insistent self-assurance-cum-self-defense of theater types lightly, while the world (that is, me) looks at such irrational happiness among the backstage banter of "real" actors as a roomful of egoists gone mad. The corporate subplot is so slight, only Tommy Lee Jones's Axeman knows from which meager hell these faint spirits issue forth, and all that's left are tedious spats bred from shallow misunderstandings. I am a non-believer in the stage; give me the movies and save the fatuous machinations of the merry few for wide-eyed, sentimental high schoolers.
But no, that's too bitter. The show's heart and humor are in the right place, but all that lovely Shakespeare (in the end, the written word) is just a contrast to the clubby "dramedy" that I never feel (or felt) a part of.
posted by NPK at 11:59 PM
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