( Nearly two years ago, I was a features editor for a student run newspaper at a local college. I got to cover and write reviews and features. There was one play that I got to cover and looking back on it, it still is one of my favorite plays that I've seen at the college. It had so many elements and mostly it was hilarious. I thought that I might post it and share it.)
Different Look at Two Classics
On April 12, the Illinois Central College Arts and Communication Department Theatre Program presented the show “Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)” in the Studio Theatre at the Performing Art Center. A story about a female writer who thinks that two of William Shakespeare plays, “Othello” and “Romeo and Juliet,” can be turned into a comedy and later is transported into three worlds.
This being a college theatre the setting was a bit different than the previous play, where the setting was set in a studio. It had a stone-look with some trap or hidden doors for both the characters in the story and also to help change the setting of the next scene in the story. It made the production move quickly as possible when each scene was done and the lights went to black. The lighting in the production was remarkable to watch.
There were so many different kinds of lights throughout the production that the one scene or multiple of scenes was when Constance, played by Lindsay Nolan, was transported into three worlds.
The green-shaped circles spinning around her, then a flash of a single white light came on her with two flashes of yellow light that gave way that the transporting is about done and with the music playing it sounded like it came from a classic science fiction program or even a bit of like “Alice In Wonderland sort of thing. There were characters in the production that really stood out with one of them being Nolan’s Constance.
A female writer, who doesn't have much of a life, has a crush on Professor Claude Night, played by Logan Henderson. The character was funny and delivered some of the comic lines very well that it made me think of the character Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey, in the award-winning TV series “30 Rock.”
Two others that stood out were Othello, played by Tannen Skriver and the Nurse and Ghost, played by Dusty Bredeman, who also portrayed another character in the production as a solider. Skriver playing both Othello in a dramatic scene and humorist was well played.
But it was Bredeman’s characters both Nurse and Ghost that had the audience laughing. In one scene he comes out and helps calm Juliet down after Romeo left to go have some fun. He dresses as an older female nurse that has way too much makeup on and sounded like she was from the Bronx or something. And the other scene when Constance was in the cemetery, Bredeman appeared the Ghost with an introduction from “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Acting like he is really Carson walking around the set and at the end swung a golf club like classic Carson would do on his show.
Even though there was some really good acting, there were a couple of actors that had stumbled on their lines, but it wasn't a huge ordeal in the show. And there were was one that was playing the character a bit too much. As Constance was in each world she would find three things that she had thrown away before she was transported into the world of “Othello” and “Romeo and Juliet.”
I believe that those items symbolized that it gives the character, Constance, a way that maybe she has a something better going on with her in life than she really thinks. There were some scenes in the production that was a bit predictable. For example, when Professor Night came in the office of Constance to ask her a question and showed her a small box that had a ring in it, she thought that he was going to propose to her but really was asking if Ramona, played by Natalie Holland, would like it.
It’s one of those classic comedy scenes that you would see over and over in film, theatre and on television. It seemed that the audience enjoyed the more when Constance was in the world of “Romeo and Juliet,” which received the most laughs in the show, mostly between the relationship between Constance and Romeo and Juliet.
“Goodnight Desdemona” is a farce play about how life isn't all bad that there is harmony. It’s about how three people who are different have about the same issue in life and that there are people that care about for one another. It has showed a lot of variety in the production than you could even imagine coming from the characters of William Shakespeare.
(I got to cover a lot of plays but this one probably has to be the very top of the rest. This production had everything that I could have imagine and more. It really blew my mind away.)
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