A Night in November: Pierre Brault’s current Gladstone show is not to be missed!

We’re drawn into a culture in which a Protestant welfare clerk named Kenneth Norman McCallister chortles with glee when he secures a coveted membership in a Belfast golf club ahead of his boss — a Roman Catholic named Jerry who probably would never be allowed to join anyway.

It’s a culture in which Kenneth takes pleasure in humiliating those claimants who come to his counter and prove to be of the wrong religion. And even though he’s bored and resentful of a stifling home life, he shares the religious bigotry of his house-proud wife and their friends

But then he unwillingly accompanies his appalling father-in-law to a World Cup play-off match between Northern Ireland and the southern republic of Eire, and the collective tribal hatred emanating from the stands — with the cackling old man among the worst offenders —  is too much for even an uncompromising bigot like Kenneth to bear. He begins undergoing some kind of epiphany — one that ultimately sees him flying across the Atlantic to America, proudly wearing a green Eire football jersey, seized by the need to cheer on these despised Southern Catholics in their legendary 1994 World Cup victory against Italy.

It’s a teaming, turbulently alive world that’s currently in possession of the Gladstone Theatre stage — the world of Irish dramatist Marie Jones and her beautifully written play, A Night In November. And on this occasion, it owes its impact to the solo brilliance of Pierre Brault, an actor with a remarkable gift for taking on multiple lives and giving each a distinctive reality.

When A Night In November finally made it to London in 2007, an indignant critic for the conservative Daily Telegraph attacked it as Irish Republican propaganda. That indictment seems unfair to Marie Jones, a thoughtful and humane playwright already familiar to Ottawa audiences because of two other works, Stones In His Pocket and Fly Me To The Moon. Perhaps, given that the play takes place during The Troubles, Jones might be accused of wishful thinking, of writing a fairy tale. After all, Kenneth does emerge as an almost symbolic figure when, having actually engaged on a more human level with members of what he had long considered to a despised papist community, he can now make this proud declaration: “I am a free man, I am a Protestant man, I am an Irish man.” The play seems less propaganda than a call to reject mindless tribalism, but it’s not all sunshine — in the afterglow of World Cup celebrations, bad news from Belfast sends an icicle through the heart of the story.

The bottom line is that A Night In November is currently providing some of the best theatre Ottawa audiences will be getting this season. And the lynch pin of its success is the mercurial, multi-faceted presence of Pierre Brault an actor who can flip from comedy to pathos on a dime — and take us along with him.

A Night in November  by Marie Jones,

Performed by Pierre Brault

Set and lighting design — David Magladry

Plays at the Gladstone until March 17.