Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✩✩
by Ann-Marie MacDonald, directed by Alisa Palmer
Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
March 22-April 14, 2001
“Constance Ledbelly in a Leaden Production”
Ann-Marie MacDonald's delightful confection "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)" has, since its appearance in 1988, become one of the most successful Canadian plays written in English with over 100 productions in Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. The current CanStage production is the first major production of the play in Toronto in over ten years. The major joy of this production is the author herself in the central role of a self-deprecating assistant professor undergoing a Jungian discovery of the self. The major disappointment is the unimaginative direction and design, which never rise to the level of MacDonald's invention.
For those who have not yet encountered it, "Goodnight Desdemona" concerns a crisis in the life of a downtrodden academic, Constance Ledbelly, who has spent her time ghostwriting articles for the man she has a crush on, Professor Claude Night. On the day of her crisis, her birthday, Constance learns that not only is her love unrequited and her labour taken for granted but Night will be marrying a graduate student and living with her in England. Constance has worked for years trying to decode the Gustav manuscript to prove that Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and "Othello" were originally meant to be comedies but were turned into tragedies by the omission of a "wise fool" who would prevent the plays' misfortunes. In despair she casts the manuscript (and herself) into her wastebasket only to find herself in the worlds of the two plays. Unknowingly, she takes on the role of the "wise fool" only to discover that while she has prevented some misunderstandings, others immediately crop up to take their place. She comes to see that Desdemona, Juliet and the "wise fool" are all aspects of her own nature, and in the end all three are united in Constance's rebirth to a new integrated self.
MacDonald gives us the definitive portrayal of this central role. Still looking like a boyish waif, MacDonald's Constance is a kind of female nerd we regard with a mingling of humour and pity. As might be expected, the author/actor brings out all the nuances of the multiple puns and allusions in the text with delightful insouciance. She is a brilliant comedian. Her timing, gestures, expressions are so right they effaced from memory all previous portrayals I had seen.
The rest of the cast is also very strong. To be both clever and politically correct in depicting Constance's looking-glass world, Juan Chioran, a white actor, is cast as Othello and Alison Sealy-Smith, a black actor, is cast as Desdemona. Chioran plays Othello in the old-fashioned "singing" style of Shakespearean acting which nowadays rather smells of ham. He is as conceited as one could wish as Professor Night, and, though his main role in the "Romeo" section is Tybalt, he nearly steals the show as Juliet's lascivious Nurse. Sealy-Smith, one of the finest of many actors no longer at Stratford, obviously relishes the role of Desdemona as warrior queen. She vamps it up as Ramona, Professor Night's inamorata, and can swashbuckle with the best as Mercutio. Andy Velásquez is so non-threatening as Iago that his punishment is not as comic as it should be. As the Chorus he is fine, but where he excels is at making MacDonald's gay Romeo hilariously ditzy. Cara Pifko is not at the same level as the other actors in terms of voice control or characterization. She is pleasant but I have seen MacDonald's manically death-obsessed Juliet played to much greater effect.
With such a cast, how strange, then, that aside from one clever casting decision, director Alisa Palmer should make the play seem so awkward. Her blocking often impedes rather than heightens the comedy. In the first scene Constance's huge desk is downstage centre blocking the view of the single entrance. Though sitting in house seats, I could not see half of the physical comedy MacDonald uses when entering, and the desk blocked the view of the next three actors' entrances and the comedy of a term paper pushed through the letter-slot. Palmer uses blackouts for the transformation scenes from Constance's office to Othello's Cyprus to Romeo's Verona to a graveyard and back to the office. Blackouts destroy the whole nature of transformation, and transformation, oneiric, alchemical and personal, is what the play is all about. Rather than the dreamlike fluidity one might expect in this Jungian comedy, both movement and pacing are clunky throughout.
One might think that a play combining the worlds of academe, Shakespeare, Jung and alchemy would be a designer's dream. Yet, Charlotte Dean has produced the most uninspired sets and costumes I have ever seen for this play. I assume that the sets, painted to look as if build from scrap metal, are supposed to remind us that Constance has entered her wonderland via a wastebasket. However, it is explicit in the text that Constance's experience of Shakespeare on stage comes from productions at Stratford. Why emphasize the poverty of the portal for the dream at the expense of the theatrically overproduced world she could find there? The costumes for Cyprus and Verona are by-the-yard pseudo-Elizabethan nightgowns, with Desdemona's outfit looking particularly ugly. It makes sense that Constance should be no fashion-plate, but why make the heroines she admires look so unattractive? Andrea Lundy's lighting is the most imaginative element of the design, while I found Richard Feren's sound either too loud or too soft and usually unnecessary.
What carries the evening is the play itself, especially when the major roles are so well acted as here. I was struck yet again by how clever and overflowing with double-entendres MacDonald's text is. There are few Canadian plays that are so thematically rich and linguistically playful. So, ignore the unfortunate design and the clumsy staging, and seize the rare opportunity to see the author herself mine the comic gold in this wonderful play.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Alison Sealy-Smith, Juan Chioran and Ann-Marie MacDonald. ©2001 Canadian Stage.
2001-04-12
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)