Kestral Productions Presents
goodnight desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
Written By Ann-Marie MacDonald
Directed by Madeleine Peach Ingridsdotter
Executive Producer David Huss &
Producer Lorraine Wilde
Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31 (matinee) & February 4, 5, 6, 7 (matinee)
at New Prospect Theatre
Canadian author, actor, and playwright, Ann-Marie MacDonald, is one of Director Madeleine Ingridsdotter's favorite authors, so this production is a bit of a tribute.
Ingridsdotter also developed their own love of Shakespeare after playing Marc Antony in Kestral Productions' Spring 2026 All-Women production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at New Prospect Theatre.
"Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises…. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted, and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy."
Reviews of the Original Productions:
“Clever, pointed and entertaining… This play is one of the wildest and wooliest feminist reappraisals that the theatre has seen, and one of the most intellectually ambitious.” —The Globe and Mail
“Stratford-upon-Acid: that’s where MacDonald’s dizzying Goodnight Desdemona lives… MacDonald traipses through the canon with glee… Lots of clever fun.” —The Village Voice
From Banuta Rubess, the first director, Toronto, Dec. 1989:
"...the greatest pleasure of the piece is its scope—in terms of content, in terms of theatricality, and ultimately, in terms of the place it gives women. The women of Goodnight Desdemona are always active, always pushing the piece forward, threatening, seductive, giving up, rallying, stabbing, kissing, embracing, thinking. Their astounding variety seems logical considering the woman who created them. After all, Ann-Marie MacDonald is herself a feminist, a raconteur, adventurer, actor, and scholar with a Sargasso Sea of a mind."
Awards
Chalmers Award for Best New Play 1989
Governor General’s Award for Drama 1990
Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Drama 1991