A Night in November: a riveting piece of theatre and a legendary performance!!!

A Night in November by Marie Jones. Performed and directed by Pierre Brault

The Irish Troubles were raging in1994. Therefore, it is not surprising that the World Cup series qualifying football match in Belfast between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — won by the Republic (later that year to win the World Cup) turned into a battlefield.

Prejudice and violence coated in national loyalty were laid bare at the game. In A Night in November, this is the glass through which Kenneth McCallister, a Protestant dole clerk in Belfast, views his life.

 

With great skill, playwright Marie Jones presents his prejudice against Roman Catholics, his unholy glee at being accepted for membership into the local golf club — a coveted privilege that eludes his Catholic boss — and making Catholic applicants wait and wait for service at the welfare office. Gradually, his discomfort with his long-held norms grows, until he finally sees the bigotry around him through new eyes at the fateful football game. This is the path that eventually leads him to transform his identity and rethink his entire way of life and his cultural heritage.

 

A Night in November is a beautifully written play and, in the capable hands of Pierre Brault, it becomes a riveting piece of theatre — almost as moving as his Blood on the Moon in a particularly atmospheric incarnation at Arts Court. (That one still resonates with me several years later.)

 

With only a bench on stage and the support of excellent lighting from David Magladry, Brault presents McCallister and the various people in his life from his prim wife and his unpleasant father-in-law to his kindly Catholic boss and the football fans he meets along the way to the World Cup final in New York.

 

That was a legendary win. This is a performance that will also become legendary.

 

A Night in November continues at the Gladstone to March 17.

 

Director/performer: Pierre Brault

Lighting: David Magladry