The Diana Christensen-esque Day competes with Tennant for the direction of the festival. Is great theater enough to fill the seats? Does the festival need to be more business-minded? That's a major struggle in the above described first season, as well as the macro conflict of the show's three-season run.
The more character-driven portion of the narrative follows Tennant's attempt to work with his former lover and festival star Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns). Tennant once went mad in the middle of a performance of Hamlet because of Ellen's liaison with none other than the gay Welles. Everyone questions Tennant's sanity, but no one more than himself because he has regular conversations with Welles's ghost.
The ghost of Welles, a witch-like but prescient old donor, a dying old actor among many other intentional idiosyncrasies ensure that each season mirrors ever so slightly the Shakespearean production that Tennant is charged with putting on. The show, however, is at its best when dealing directly with the productions, allowing some of the finest working theater actors in Canada to take on classical roles with often towering intensity. Stars well known to American audiences like Rachel McAdams and Sarah Polley give performances you hardly expect if you've only seen them in their commercial film work.
There are many great performances in the show, but I love one particular performance in season two. Prior to a preview for the show Macbeth, the lead Henry Breedlove (Geraint Wyn Davies), an arrogant, complacent stage legend, is fired. He and Tennant don't see eye to eye (and Welles's ghost is siding with Breedlove!). The show goes on with Breedlove's unprepared understudy Jerry (Oliver Dennis) in the role of Macbeth. In this great, almost episodic program Jerry has his chance to rise up and create for a few brief moments an effective, if unusual Macbeth. It's an exceptional moment for Jerry, a bit part if there ever was one, but it also shows that the show is so solid that it can go on slight tangents without losing sight of the bigger picture. The episode that follows is near perfection.
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