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It was a dark and sweltering night. Two shots ring out. A man falls. The fate of passengers of a Minneapolis bus hang in the balance.

There were multiple gunshots, multiple characters and not a lot of space in Theatre Conspiracy’s matchbox-sized performance space Saturday night as Jesse St. Louis worked the one-man show “21A.” St. Louis was in fifth gear all night, but the writing seemed stubbornly stuck in neutral and the playACTION?, like the bus it’s set in, never left the station.

The New York Times called Kevin Kling’s “21A,” Named for an actual south Minneapolis bus route, an “urban Lake Wobegon, only a lot crazier,” during a 1986 Off Broadway run. It was one of the playwright’s first works. (Nowadays, though, Kling is better known as a frequent contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”)

The play is a snapshot of the action on a parked city bus while the driver is chasing down cinnamon pastries and coffee (Coffee Mate only, no cream). The passengers are a motley collection of urban archetypes: crazy cat lady, drunk, mental patient, missionary, student, cell phone addict and gunman.

The audience also eavesdrops on conversations between the driver and a store clerk during blackouts necessary for repeated costume changes.

Essentially a character study in vignettes, the play dabbles in too many personalities to master any of them, although St. Louis does bring a particular manic energy to each part. Tellingly, he does his best work as an unusual young man with a rather chilling personality disorder. The scene is easily the most honest of the night — and probably the only time I managed to forget I was watching someone perform on stage.

Other roles, particularly an older woman with an entirely too predictable feline fascination, are written and played for laughs instead of any deeper examination of the human spirit. The driver’s opening monologue would seem to promise this, stating quite baldly, “Some of the people have been through (expletive) a cat wouldn’t live through.”

The audience never sees this evidence of great suffering. At a brisk 60 minutes, few of the characters develop into anything more than quirks, including a particularly talkative drunk wearing a beer carton as a helmet.

Beyond that, St. Louis almost visibly bounces on stage, which is oddly out of sync with the downtrodden city dwellers he’s portraying. Their inner fire has long been extinguished. Director Bill Taylor should have recognized and refocused his star’s intensity. In particular, I’d have like to have seen a little more distinction between the characters — be it voice, mannerism, physicality or accent.

The “appreciate the world around you” message, right up to and including the gunshots, the gunman and the inevitable robbery (total take, $1.07) seems a tad simplistic, given all the fuss required for its delivery. The what-the-hell-was-that twist comes from somewhere in the left-field bleachers, but makes sense upon reflection.

Bringing someone else’s singular vision to life is a tall order, especially when the vision is as idiosyncratic as the one presented in “21A.” Jesse St. James delivers an hour of rat-a-tat dialogue, lightning-fast costume changes and an energetic, watchable portrayal of the characters on a south Minneapolis bus. The show’s not perfect, but happily, no one dies and the twist ending is one you definitely won’t see coming a mile away.

There’s always a crazy cat lady. Always. Nineteen cans of cat food and one frozen dinner.

Email me at csilk@naplesnews.com.