Photo by Josh Goleman. Design: Armistead Booker
When playing chess never move your pawn to F4 since it makes your king vulnerable and, as Kevin James Doyle advises, "If you're playing anyone even decent at chess, they're going to know you don't know what you're doing — and they're going to destroy you."
Doyle, a comedian, actor and chess instructor, starts After Endgame with this anecdote, a 70-minute conversation on chess, comedy and the deceptions present in life and the games we play. While knowledge of chess allows you to engage in a match before or after showtime on the boards that dot the tables surrounding the stage, the performance aims to amuse all, especially the neophytes.
Besides offering basic game strategies, Doyle entertains by interweaving the history of chess with his own experience as a teacher who’s completed more than 6,500 lessons with students as young as 3 and as old as 94. Jokes about why he can’t play a pedophile on “Law & Order” (What parent would hire Mr. Kevin as a chess teacher afterward?) are mixed with stories about master chess players such as American Paul Morphy to the 1956 Game of the Century that established a 13-year-old Bobby Fischer as an emerging presence when he sacrificed his Queen to beat the twice-his-age Donald Byrne.
Photo by Josh Goleman
Along the way, Doyle recounts what happened when a rich investor sponsored his trip to Singapore, where he taught chess to the local elite and their offspring as he sought financing for a chess-inspired business. The basement bar extends the lesson with a Chess Museum of sorts that features images of past games and champions that Doyle curated with director Cory Cavin and set designer Charles Matte.
After Endgame is playing at the SoHo Playhouse’s Huron Room (15 Vandam St., NYC) through March 8, and then on March 30 and 31 at The Lyric Hyperion (2105 Hyperion Ave., Los Angeles). [See the After Endgame trailer]
