A NIGHT in November is etched deeply into the consciousness of Matthew McElhinney who was "about four" when his mother, Belfast playwright Marie Jones, penned what would become one of her most poignant, bitter-sweet, funny, sad and brilliant dramas for the Northern Ireland stage.
"I grew up with this play and it grew up with me," says the actor-turned-director who is directing actor Matthew Forsythe in the role for the play's 25th anniversary as part of the Marie Jones season at the Lyric.
Forsythe (The Fall, Come Home, My Mother and Other Strangers) steps into Kenneth McCallister's sensible, welfare clerk shoes for the demanding one-man show which sees his character break all the rules he has ever known as a seemingly acquiescent Protestant football supporter.
It is fair to say, it is a dream job for McElhinney, himself an ardent Northern Ireland fan who appreciates the passion and the pain of both theatre and football.
"A Night in November is an exploration of identity, written when I was beginning to form my own, and recounting one man's triumphant journey," he says. "I watched a similar journey of triumph occur in real time from the stands of Windsor Park over the last 25 years – from the darkest days of Northern Irish football to the accolade of 'Best Fans in Europe'.
"Identity is defined not by our labels, but by our actions. It is an honour to revive this piece for the 25th anniversary and to be able to look back and appreciate just how far we’ve come."
But, however noble that transformative journey has been in terms of football – evolving from sectarian chants to a family friendly environment – it has presented a few theatrical challenges for the director, who was loath to change his mother's script.
"One of my concerns at the beginning was how not to change the script, but still show that football journey," he explains. "I didn't want to change the rawness of it and what it meant at that time, but I wanted to frame the piece in a way that we're looking back and seeing those changes.
"We have kind of topped and tailed it with this idea of him [McCallister] looking back, from the perspective of 25 years on. We have this lovely mirror effect which kind of represents him looking at his own reflection and we also reflect the audience and ask them to consider themselves as a crowd."
Fortunately, Jones gave him free artistic rein with the script, took herself off to Greece and left him to it.
"That is one of the luxuries, I think, the writer being my mother," he concedes with a laugh. "She trusts me and has probably allowed me to have more freedom to tweak the script than she would most people. She was here for the first day of the read-through before taking off on holiday, so she'll not have a clue what we're doing until she's sitting in the auditorium."
McElhinney, who worked as assistant director for Dan Gordon (the original 'Kenneth' in 1994) in his recent Frank Carson one-man show and last year directed the Waking the Giant outdoor event for Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, believes it a pertinent time to set the record straight.
"When it first opened, A Night in November courted a fair degree of controversy, mostly because of its take on the Northern Ireland fans, who didn't exactly come out with a glowing report," he reflects. "But mum was just writing about what she saw at the time.
"When I first went to a game, it was around the start of the 'Give Sectarianism the Boot' campaign, so I have memories of fans singing The Billy Boys song and at the same time, other fans singing over the top of them to try to shut them up.
"Now, of course, it's such a family-friendly environment with no sectarianism at all. And for both sets of fans – Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – to win the Medal of Honour at Paris at the Euros was just incredible."
For someone now so equally passionate about the theatre, it is surprising to think McElhinney once tried to rebel against the 'artsy' world that dominated the lives of both his parents – playwright Marie and her actor husband, Ian McElhinney, most recently been seen as Granda Joe in Channel 4's Derry Girls.
"I started a geology degree at Queen's University to try to make my own mark in the world and get away from all that," he says. "Then I auditioned and got a part in a play, The Beauty Queen of Leenanne, at the Lyric, and that was the end of geology. I love what I do now, but it was never intentional.
"It's a project obviously close to my heart, but A Night in November has a lot of depth and full emotional range. I would like people to come and reflect on themselves and how far, as a society, we have come in 25 years, but really, I'm not one of these social activist people. I just want the audience to have a really interesting, enriching night at the theatre."
:: The 25th anniversary production of A Night in November runs at the Lyric from June 12-21 (lyrictheatre.co.uk).
