The best compliment you can pay Kevin James Doyle’s After Endgame is that it feels like a proper Fringe show. It’s not someone Beta testing their subsequent tour. It’s not someone doing parodies of whatever’s hot on TV or TikTok. It’s a show that fits so neatly into the Fringe that one can’t imagine where else you’d come across it.
Doyle is a comedian, actor and chess teacher. He brings all three into play in this hour of storytelling.
Chess is the engine of the story in this case, but you don’t have to know much about the game to engage here. Frankly I’ve never got beyond draughts.
In fact, for the first half of the show I found myself wanting more chess and less of Doyle’s own story; the acting auditions, the girl he fancies, the trip to Paris, the business opportunity in Singapore that sounds out of this world.
What’s not immediately clear is that Doyle is setting up everything that he will deftly pull together in the second half. Which, of course, makes it all the more rewarding when we begin to see that he has been playing five moves ahead.
The double pivot is being five steps behind is exactly where Doyle finds himself in the story he is telling.
This, then, is a cautionary tale. Given that mixing with millionaires in Singapore may not feel like a likely situation for most of us there is a danger audiences may feel that caution does not apply to us in the circumstances. But in the end it’s only a matter of degree. We can all be taken in by a good story. As Doyle neatly demonstrates here.
Kevin James Doyle: After Endgame, 17:05, Just the Tonic at the Caves, until August 25 (except August 12)
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/kevin-james-doyle-after-endgame
