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Private Notes
Geoffrey is ready with a new play but they're two months behind with rent and the landlord wants them out. Meanwhile, the more flexible Oliver is ready with a corporate sponsored A Midsummer Night's Dream.
After Oliver's death, arrangements are made. Who'll be the new artistic director at the Festival?
The new interim artistic director, Geoffrey, walks around with Oliver's skull. Oliver's ghost talks to Geoffrey after he rejects to direct Hamlet.
Geoffrey is in jail after trashing Ellen's party. Oliver's ghost shares the cell. Kate and Jack grow closer. Ellen's young boyfriend wants revenge.
Geoffrey assumes the direction of Hamlet and Richard and Holly assume that a disaster is just around the corner. Oliver's ghost frees Ellen's pet chameleon and viola Ophelia is recast.
It's opening night for Hamlet and though Jack has shown promise, insidious words from Richard send him running. Ellen and Geoffrey finally talk about the breakdown and the events leading up to it, and if they can find their star, the show must go on!
Richard's looking for new sponsors. Jack's leaving the theater for a movie shoot in Hawaii. It's last night with Hamlet. Is Macbeth next?
Christmas comes to New Burbage and so do the interns, who are part of the new austerity program. Richard raises begging to new heights and hires Sanjay Ranier of the hip and edgy marketing firm Frog Hammer.
The curse of Macbeth kicks in when the director of Romeo and Juliet breaks her neck, forcing Geoffrey to invite show-dog Darren Nichols back from Berlin to fill in. Juliet meets her Romeo and sparks do not fly. Ellen and Geoffrey's brief experiment in domesticity ends. Badly.
With subscribers cancelling en masse since the launch of Frog Hammer's campaign of alienation, Sanjay counsels Richard to embrace the left side of his brain. Now living in a storage room in the theatre with Oliver's ghost as a roommate, Geoffrey reaches a breaking point with his Macbeth.
Ellen confuses her auditor with a confessor but graduates to adulthood with the final tally of her back taxes. The police have developed a keen interest in Sanjay, whose real name is not Sanjay. With the veteran actor playing Macbeth dismissed for having a bloated ego, his understudy preps for the spotlight.
Youthquake--the magic of rebranding kicks in! Geoffrey works on his own brand of explosive magic, Oliver returns to the stage, Richard upgrades his dream quest to include Gilbert & Sullivan, and love conquers all.
Trying to top the critical and financial success of its last production, the festival plans to stage King Lear, as well as a contemporary new musical. But creative director Geoffrey Tennant finds himself seized by fits of uncontrollable weeping--among other, more intimate maladies.
Charles Kingman--the theatrical lion whom Geoffrey has recruited to play Lear--brings some secret demons of his own to the production and immediately alienates cast and crew alike. Meanwhile, the festival's general manager, Richard Smith-Jones, flexes his creative muscles.
Charles's erratic behavior becomes more and more disruptive, prompting Geoffrey to consider replacing him. As tensions grow within the cast of Lear, personal and professional jealousies widen the rift between the Shakespearean actors and the eager young players in the musical.
The final rehearsal of King Lear turns into a full-on train wreck, as Charles fumbles dozens of lines. With East Hastings a smashing success, Richard--now known as "Big Dick" among his youthful admirers--proposes the heretofore unthinkable: moving the Shakespearean tragedy into the workshop stage and the musical into the main venue.
Anna, the festival's efficient assistant manager, steps in to help Geoffrey with Charles. But King Lear loses its Regan as actress Ellen Fanshaw flees the festival for the promise of a big payday on TV.
"King Lear" finally opens with the original cast intact.
