Istvan Reviews ➤ GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA (GOOD MORNING JULIET) ⏤ Canadian Stage

I first encountered this clever little classic of Canuck theatre in my late teens, almost a decade after its premiere, and it has now been just over a decade since I saw my first production of it. It is a foundational text for Canadian theatre-folk and, although my engagement has been limited, it has been a consistent presence rattling about the back of my brain, sporadically resurfacing as a conscious touchstone for playful riffs on the Bard’s canon.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is as ageless as its author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, has proven herself to be in this 40th anniversary production by Canadian Stage. She steps into the role of mousy, under appreciated Queen’s University teaching assistant, Constance Ledbelly. Almost 70 now, she’s remarkably spry and agile in this role she’s penned, puckishly bounding about and spurting her witty quips. She’s a delight to witness and her embodiment adds real-world resonance to Constance’s moment of self-discovery as “the author.”

Constance, a whimsical academic, has this theory that Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello and Romeo and Juliet, are actually disrupted comedies, firmly establishing the conventions of the genre yet missing the Wise Fool to set everything right. You should already know this play, but even as a newbie, you’ll likely pick up on the fact, well before she does, that Constance—intruding upon the plots of both plays and enabling comic circumstance to prevail over tragic—is the Wise Fool she’s seeking to find.

Picking up on hints within the classic texts, MacDonald shrewdly subverts the traditional takes on these characters. Romeo (Praneet Akilla) is into dudes, Juliet (Caroline Toal) isn’t as innocent as we thought, Othello (Carolyn Taylor) is a braggart and Desdemona (Jessica B. Hill) is actually the fiercer warrior. It is both a celebration of Shakespeare’s craft and a critique of the limits placed on the women of Elizabethan theatre (and society, generally). All of the gender-bending and raunchiness (oysters, pearls and spelunking!) honours Shakespeare’s oeuvre while feeling distinctly queer and modern. 

I need you to know that I love this play. It is as intelligently conceived, and a lot more fun than, say, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. So I am disappointed to report this production felt stale to me. Director Alisa Palmer’s production can be a bit too sluggish and meditative for the material. MacDonald has also added some updated jokes in an attempt to freshen it up, but has, ironically, undermined her play’s timelessness. I can do without the references to Heated Rivalry and “elbows up.”

MacDonald is fully endearing as a spinsterly, put-upon academic learning to appreciate herself. Taylor’s schtick—as both Constance’s cad of a boss, Professor Night, and Othello—is on point as a send-up of actorly bravado. Hill is both funny and reasonably intimidating—not by being manly, but by giving Desdemona’s bloodlust a wholly feminine flavour. Akilla (as both the villainous Iago and Romeo) and Toal, as Juliet, are both spunky charisma machines, but I don’t think their chemistry is palpable enough.

While the cast is stacked with talented individuals, this all feel so very tame. Oh, there is a rhythm and style here, and plenty of funny business, but the antics are lacking intimacy, urgency and authentic chaos. Fitted up in stuffy Elizabethan garb, we see them get thrown off their stiff dramatic tracks and their body language does betray a sense of the freedom that Constance’s novel presence affords them, though none of it feels wild enough.

In all fairness, though, whatever they are doing was dwarfed by the size of the venue, my distance from them, and the scale of the Judith Bowden’s set. The scenic design wasn’t doing it for me. The towering wall of Constance’s cluttered office, with all that artfully peeling wallpaper and dusty patina, is very cool, but MacDonald’s ample charm is swallowed up by its vertiginous effect. The abstracted, red framework structure centre stage has utility in the re-contextualized balcony scene, but is sort of an abstruse eyesore for most of the performance. (The curtains, when they appear, significantly!)

If you’ll allow me a tangent here, I’m compelled to mentioned how, mildly yet genuinely, disturbed I was by the Hector scene. When I first read the play, it was a moment that really tickled me—Romeo and Juliet, in the throws of a childish squabble, tear their pet turtle (Hector) in two during a tug-of-war. Having lived with a turtle for over ten years, it… well, bothered me in a way I know wasn’t intended. Turtles are inherently funnier, I guess, but I also suspect mammalian pets are more commonly assumed not to trigger an especially affectionate or protective impulse. Ah, there’s the rub with comedy: specific sensibilities reign supreme.

So take this, as you should any review, with a grain of salt. Sensibilities reign supreme. I imagine this will be a suitably satisfying theatre experience for many.

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Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
November 6 to 22, 2026
Bluma Appel Theatre
(27 Front Street East)
2 hours, 30 minutes (including intermission)