Forty years after its first appearance Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Shakespeare mystery comedy, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is back at CanStage in a production directed by Alisa Palmer and starring the playwright as Constance Ledbelly. It’s a strange but rewarding and very funny play. It takes two iconic Shakespeare heroines and tells their stories as they might have wanted to see them told. It’s part academic/literary mystery story with elements of panto including an impressive number of double entendres. It also mixes actual Shakespeare text, pseudo Shakespeare and something much more demotic to great effect. There’s been some mild updating since the 1980s but it’s not intrusive.
Last night saw the first of two performances of Haydn’s rarely performed 1791 work Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. I know how much effort and indeed passion went into creating this production and the singing is pretty good. I wish I could say I enjoyed it but I can’t. There were just too many issues.
