[2] He first appeared on the stage in 1926 at the Cambridge Festival Theatre and joined the Old Vic Company in 1934, playing Hamlet, Richard II, and Iago.

In 1927, Evans played a poet in The Pleasure Garden by Beatrice Mayor followed by Young Man in On Baile's Strand by W. B. Yeats, Midir in The Immortal Hour by Fiona Macleod, the Hon.

In 1934, he went to the Old Vic Theatre where his interpretation of Shakespeare's Richard II was praised and led to an invitation to join Katharine Cornell in the United States.

Evans went on to play Hamlet (1938), Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 (1939), Macbeth (1941), and Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1942) opposite the Viola of Helen Hayes, under the direction of Margaret Webster.

He arranged for the transfer of Carl Reiner from the Signal Corps to the entertainment unit in Hawaii, where Evans was his commanding officer.

version" of Hamlet that cut the text of the play to make the title character more appealing to the troops, an interpretation so popular that he later took it to Broadway in 1945.

He shifted his attention to the works of Shaw, notably as John Tanner in Man and Superman and as King Magnus in The Apple Cart.

Evans also appeared in the fourth season of Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker playing a French impresario "Beaumarchais".

[5] Continuing his American TV appearances, he guest starred in The Big Valley from the latter part of the fourth and final season of that western series in April 1969, an episode entitled "Danger Road".

Their performances were widely regarded as the definitive portrayals of these characters, although one notable dissenter was Orson Welles, who stated that Evans, as an actor, was "worse than bad – he was poor.