Goodnight
Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet
by Anne Marie MacDonald
Shakespeare Would Roll Over in His Grave... With Laughter!
Plain
and unpopular, university lecturer Constance Leadbelly has a theory: behind
Shakepeare's tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Othello lies
an earlier manuscript, a comedy, written by another mysterious author.
Finding the author is her quest, a quest with deeper existential relevance
than just solving a literary puzzle.
But how? Even her self-absorbed professorial lover (who uses her to write his lectures) scoffs at this fantasy of hers. The answer lies by falling through the office garbage can into a Shakepearean world... and there the fun begins. Dropped into Othello, Constance inadvertantly saves Desdemona's life, subsequently learning what it is to be a warrier-woman. Magically transported into Romeo and Juliet Constance intervenes to stop the death of Mercutio and, therefore, of Tybalt, and Romeo, and Juliet, most of whom fall in love with the mysterious visitor.
Sword play, romance, cross-dressing, Shakespearean verse, magic and just plain fun all ensue, undergirded by a Jungian desire to know and reconcile the opposites: tragedy and comedy, warrier and lover, male and female.
It helps to know a bit of Shakespeare, and it helps to know a bit of Carl Jung, but neither are really necessary for an audience to have a great evening of laughter and enjoyment.
And Canadian thespians can be pleased, too, that the author, Anne Marie MacDonald, is Canadian, author of the very successful novel, Fall On Your Knees.
Production Dates
Nechako Valley Secondary School,
Vanderhoof, B.C. Canada
Producers: Shelly Work, Susan Carberry
Director: Susan Carberry
| Sylvia Byron | Juliet's Nurse |  |
| Wes Copp | Iago/The Ghost | |
| Brian Cross | Claude Night | |
| Gordon Crum | Chorus | |
| Laurel Crum | Juliet | |
| Bruce Dempster | Mercutio/Soldier | |
| Erin Fitzpatrick | Constance Ledbelly | |
| Libby Hart | Ramona/Servant | |
| Jean Johnson | Student | |
| Craig Kellam | Othello | |
| Jordan Stowe | Tybalt | |
| Shelly Work | Desdemona | |
| Brad Wyers | Romeo |
