Fest Magazine: Review – After Endgame
A chess story with a strong final sequence of moves.
Opening: it’s certainly confident, with some punchy factoids about chess. The strategy is clear and we learn about Kevin James Doyle, a chess player (250 millionth best in the world) and educator, as well as a comedian and actor, living in New York. He manoeuvres us around the facts of his life, a few gentle jokes suggesting a firm grip on the match. But there’s cracks in the plan. The snippets of info are a little scattergun. The jokes start to rely on a few set pieces (“now here’s the thing…”). I might accept that impersonating a Moroccan woman is OK in NYC, but it feels a borderline rule infringement in EDI.
Middle game: meandering. We start to wonder if Doyle’s strategy for this match, and for the telling of his chess-based true story, has the moves to back it up. There’s empty squares where punchlines should be. “Time will tell,” he says at one point. We wait for a funny tag that never comes. A set piece about drug harm reduction programmes is energetic, and provides probably the most sustained laughs, but feels like a sequence shoehorned in from another match (in this excruciating metaphor, that’s his club set). He gets stuck convincing us of the merits of backgammon.
Endgame: it’s a much more devastating sequence, victory plucked from the jaws of defeat. Here Doyle’s frankly jaw dropping story really takes flight. He brings pathos, timing and acting to bear. He handles a Siri-based interruption with real panache. There’s a well-weighted running gag. If not checkmate, this is a respectable draw.
