Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Play) - Softcover

MacDonald, Ann-Marie

3.71

1,625 ratings by Goodreads

9780676971699: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Play)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676971695 ISBN 13: 9780676971699

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 1998

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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.

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Review:

"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

"A tour de force.... Ann-Marie delivers her message with tremendous wit, breathtaking wordplay and great gusts of knee-slapping bread comedy." The Ottawa Citizen
"Magical.... An uproarious and smart comedy." Pittsburgh Press

About the Author:

ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is an author, actor, playwright and broadcaster. She trained as an actor at the National Theatre School of Canada and has appeared in numerous independent Canadian films. She earned a Genie nomination for her role in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, and won a Gemini Award for Where the Spirit Lives. She has performed in theatres across Canada, appearing in the Mirvish Production of Top Girls.

Her first solo-authored play, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) won the Chalmers Award, the Governor General's Award, and the Canadian Authors' Association Award. Her other works for the stage include the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, book and lyrics for the musical Anything that Moves (which garnered several Dora Awards, including Outstanding New Musical), and Belle Moral: A Natural History.

Ann-Marie's first novel, Fall on Your Knees, was a critically acclaimed international bestseller. It won the Commonwealth Prize, was a finalist for the Giller Prize, and won the People's Choice Award and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year. In 2002 it became an Oprah's Book Club selection. It has been translated into 19 languages. Her second novel, The Way the Crow Flies, was an international bestseller, a finalist for the Giller Prize, and a Good Morning America Book Club pick. It has been translated into 13 languages.

She lives in Toronto with her partner and their two children.

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