Ann-Marie MacDonald has written a thrilling play in "Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)." She has an uncanny ability to write parts for existing characters, and for making it feel as though the original writer had done so. Considering the writer from whom she borrows is one William Shakespeare, she's accomplished no small feat.

The play's premise is simple: a modern scholar, Constance, believes she's found an undecipherable source to both Othello and Romeo and Juliet. She is magically sucked into each of the plays in turn, and discovers the two Ladies in question aren't quite as they seem. Desdemona is a fierce warrior, and Juliet becomes quickly bored with Romeo after having gained him.
MacDonald does a brilliant job of combining plain prose, Shakespeare's original lines and her own iambic pentameter blank verse. She gives her publisher strict instructions as to the setting of the text: blank verse is indented, and direct Shakespeare quotes are set in an italic font.

Desdemona: If she be false, heaven mocked itself."
Wretch, be sure thou prove my friend a villainess!
Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof -

Iago: Yet be content!
Desdemona: Make me to see't! What's this?

Iago: The pedant fool's cap writ in Turkish code, found by
my wife in your underwear drawer! (pp.50-51)

She twists around Shakespeare's words and turns two tragedies into comedies, with Constance as the Fool. Words which Shakespeare fans recognize are traded amongst the characters, quite cleverly.

The funniest part of the script involves this trick. MacDonald has Juliet fall in love with Connie, unbeknownst that she has hid her gender and is really a girl!

Juliet: But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Constantine the sun!

Constance: Uh oh.

Juliet: He speaks.

Constance: Romeo? Is that you?

Juliet: I know not how to tell thee who I am.
My sex, dear boy, is hateful to myself,
because it is belov'ed not by thee;
therefore I weare tonight, this boyish hose. (pp.68)

Romeo's famous words, put into Juliet's mouth and twisted slightly, are still instantly recognizable. This creates hysterics in the audience - better than the classic mistaken identity ruse? Shakespeare himself used it often, the best example being his Comedy of Errors.

MacDonald's knack with iambic pentameter is indisputable. She even mimic's Shakespeare's style of word choice:

Juliet: Be thou the mirror pool of my desire:
reflect my love as thou dost ape my form.

Constance: Thou wouldst distort the pool, thy looking glass, with words of love like careless pebbles tossed;
the rippling waters tell a loving lie,
and show my face to thee as 't'were thine own. (pp.77-78)

Twined with the archaic language is modern slang for a comic twist, as in this long speech of Juliet's professed love:

Juliet: More beauty in thy testament of years,
Than in the face of smooth and depthless youth.
Nay, lovelier by far, now that I see
The sculpting hand of time upon they brow;
O look on me with eyes that looked on life
Before I e'er was born an infant blind.
O touch me with those hands that held thy quill
Before I learned to read and write my name.
And thus with every look and touch, entwine
My poor young thread into thy richer weave. (pp.77)

. . . followed by Connie's succinct: "Okay." Quite funny, all in all, and an overall success for Ms. MacDonald.

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