In the folklore of the New Burbage Theatre Festival, Geoffrey Tennant, Ellen Fanshaw and Oliver Wells were a force to be reckoned with: Geoffrey and Ellen were the darlings of the stage and Oliver was the director who knew how to orchestrate their talents. But just as the treachery in Hamlet’s court drove him to madness, so, too, did the uncertainty of love and loyalty at the New Burbage Theatre Festival cause Geoffrey Tennant to become unhinged. An artist to the last, Geoffrey departed from sanity in the middle of a performance of Hamlet. Not only was it his best performance, it was also his last.
Fast forward to the Theatre Sans Argent where Geoffrey has resurfaced as Artistic Director. Down on its Shakespearean heels, under-financed, under-attended and under the gun, he is failing in his struggles to make ends meet. At the New Burbage Festival, Oliver Welles is faring […]
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In the folklore of the New Burbage Theatre Festival, Geoffrey Tennant, Ellen Fanshaw and Oliver Wells were a force to be reckoned with: Geoffrey and Ellen were the darlings of the stage and Oliver was the director who knew how to orchestrate their talents. But just as the treachery in Hamlet’s court drove him to madness, so, too, did the uncertainty of love and loyalty at the New Burbage Theatre Festival cause Geoffrey Tennant to become unhinged. An artist to the last, Geoffrey departed from sanity in the middle of a performance of Hamlet. Not only was it his best performance, it was also his last.
Fast forward to the Theatre Sans Argent where Geoffrey has resurfaced as Artistic Director. Down on its Shakespearean heels, under-financed, under-attended and under the gun, he is failing in his struggles to make ends meet. At the New Burbage Festival, Oliver Welles is faring much better financially as the Festival’s Artistic Director who is mounting a soulless production of Midsummer Night’s Dream where actors are actors and stage sheep are nervous. Ellen, Geoffrey’s former paramour, is also comfortably ensconced in her role as the prima donna. Ellen is still talented enough to hang onto the ‘prima’, but the passing years are taking their toll on the ‘donna’.
In a freak accident where the pork truck meets the pavement, Oliver Welles dies. As the grief-struck theatre troupe adjusts to Oliver’s death, Geoffrey quickly discovers he has to adjust to the occasional reappearance of Oliver’s ghost offering the kind of sage advice only dead men with an axe to grind can bring. It’s like Hamlet therapy – free of charge.
Oliver’ Welles’ memorial service quickly dissolved into chaos. The next day, thanks to May Silverstone of the Board of Directors and chance favouring the demented mind, Geoffrey is embraced as the prodigal son and made Interim Artistic Director. That is when Geoffrey and May make a new enemy – Holly Day, of Cosmopolitan-Lenstrex Corporation, the Festival’s biggest sponsor. With visions of a Shakespearean theme park dancing in her head, Holly, a human raptor disguised as an executive, recruits the assistance of Richard Smith-Jones, New Burbage General Manager-turned-corporate boy toy.
Geoffrey balks at directing the Festival’s upcoming production of Hamlet. Refusing to face yet another ghost from his past, Tennant yields to the appointment of Darren Nichols, a director who embodies the Siegfried and Roy theory of Shakespeare. Ellen is to play Gertrude when she isn’t playing Mrs. Robinson to her new enamorata, dirt-biker, Sloan, holding him up as a shield to protect herself from letting Geoffrey too close. Claire, an actress of negligible talent but with an influential father on the Board of Directors, buddies up with her understudy, Kate who, in addition to having legitimate acting talent, also has the attention of Jack Crew, a most un-princely Hamlet plucked from Hollywood by Richard Smith-Jones and dropped onto the Festival like a slacker bombshell.
Geoffrey soon learns that you can run from your past, but you can’t hide. Despite a bitter leading lady, a clueless leading man, and a scheming General Manager, he manages to stage a remarkably personal production of Hamlet; the play that drove him mad.
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