Actor becomes vibrant storyteller in engaging one-man FST play ‘A Night in November’

For nearly two hours in Marie Jones’ engaging Irish comedy “A Night in November,” James Evans demonstrates how an actor keeps an audience glued to their every word.

In the Florida Studio Theatre Stage III production, Evans plays about two dozen different characters in a play about an ordinary Northern Ireland government clerk who comes to see the world around him in a new way after a horrifying experience at a 1994 World Cup soccer match between his home team Northern Ireland and rivals from the Republic of Ireland.

Kenneth McCallister grew up Protestant in Northern Ireland, and over his 34 years became accustomed to the bloody battles with the Catholics of the Republic during the period known as “The Troubles.” The first thing we see him do is check under his car for any signs of a bomb that Kenneth tells us could be as small as a box of matches.

He’s an average man, someone who would probably pass by unnoticed on the street. He is married and in a routine job handling welfare and jobless claims for people he barely acknowledges as human. They’re just numbers.

But his view is transformed after hearing the angry taunts and horrible slurs bellowed by other Protestants against opponents at a World Cup match. The violent nature of the shouts and posturing of the fans leads Kenneth to question what he has always known. He helps protect a rival sitting nearby in the stands who is clearly nervous about revealing his true allegiance.

It sounds serious, but the play, directed by Kristin Clippard, is filled with humorous touches, much of it coming from the enthusiastic way Evans tells the story and how masterfully he shifts among the different men and women, all with varied accents. Some of the Irish brogues are a bit more difficult to quickly understand than others, but he always conveys enough thought behind the words so you understand the point.

Among the characters is his gruff, chain-smoking father-in-law, Ernie, and his devoted wife Deborah, who gets overly worried if everything isn’t in place before friends come for a birthday dinner. He plays one of Kenneth's office clients who doesn’t understand that Dublin is in a different country. And then there are drunken soccer fans he meets as he creates an uncharacteristic spontaneous adventure to follow the World Cup team to New York.

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For much of the play, Evans wears a print shirt and tie and a zippered jacket, and still makes you see all the different people and the shifting scenes from a smoke-filled car to his well-appointed home and a crowded New York City bar, with help from subtle shifts in Jamie Thygesen's lighting and background sound effects by Naomi Marin.

Evans does all this with unflagging energy. As soccer mania takes hold, he keeps breaking out in wild chants of “Olé “Olé” while waving his arms in the air. His exuberance is contagious, and even as the story takes darker or more poignant turns, Evans gets you to hang on every moment.

In the end, he and the play could potentially cause audience members to reconsider their own views of the world, their long-held beliefs and the way they go along with everyone else when their emotional, intellectual or moral leanings tell them otherwise.

‘A Night in November’

By Marie Jones. Directed by Kristin Clippard. Reviewed Feb. 28. Through March 15, Florida Studio Theatre Stage III, Bowne’s Lab Theatre, 1265 First St., Sarasota. Tickets are $25-$46. 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: One actor plays 23 roles in FST’s gripping ‘A Night in November’