December 2013 - Page 3 of 3 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Paul Rainville wins Audrey Ashley award (2013-14)! Ottawa U. gets Student theatre award!

By Capital Critics Circle | December 2, 2013

Capital Critics Circle Announces Fourteenth Annual Theatre Awards

J. P. Kelley wins best production: Princess Ivona takes the Student theatre production.

OTTAWA, December 2, 2013 – The Capital Critics Circle today announced the winners of the fourteenth annual theatre awards for plays presented in English in the National Capital Region during the 2012-2013 season. The winners are:

Best professional production:

SevenThirty Productions’ November by David Mamet, directed by John P. Kelly.

Best community theatre production:

The Ottawa Little Theatre production of Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, directed by Tom Taylor.

Best student production:

The first winner of this new category is Princess Ivona by Witold Gombrowicz, directed by Ekaterina Shestakova, University of Ottawa, Directing program. …

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet): Zach Counsil shines as an agile fencer and a stylish Romeo in this “feninist revisioning” of Shakespeare at the GCTC.

By Iris Winston | December 2, 2013

There is no question that Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is cleverly written. Linguistically attractive in its use of iambic pentameter and very funny in places, it is, in part, an attack on academics, who exploit their top students (a too-common phenomenon in the 1980s.) It also champions feminism, same-sex relationships and gender bending, as it proposes that at least two of Shakespeare’s tragedies were originally intended to be comedies.

Ann-Marie MacDonald, who debuted the lead role of dowdy doctoral candidate Constance Ledbelly 25 years ago, refers to the play as a “feminist revisioning” as she dumps her unlikely heroine at the tragic turning point of Othello and Romeo and Juliet.

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Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet) at the GCTC: a lively tale of self-discovery that at times seems burdened with trying to live up to the play’s reputation,

By Capital Critics Circle | December 1, 2013

Photo: Andrew Alexander

Ann-Marie MacDonald’s clever play GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA, (GOOD MORNING JULIET) is a lively comedic tale of self-discovery. Graduate Assistant Constance Leadbelly, who is obsessed with tracing obscure Shakespearian sources, is suddenly catapulted into the worlds of OTHELLO and ROMEO AND JULIET. She inadvertently transforms them into comedies by saving the lives of the two leading ladies. In the world of the plays, the dialogue is in nifty iambic pentameter. There are sword fights, disguises, and seductions. In Act II there’s some entertaining gender bending, prompting Desdemona’s forlorn cry, “Does no one in Verona sail straight?”

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