Every Saturday morning, in the same corner of the same park, Edward — a kindly older gentleman with endless patience — teaches chess to a group of neighborhood kids. He has given them everything he knows, starting with the first lesson any player learns: where the pieces go (“Every Piece in Its Place”). Week after week they inch closer to beating him, and week after week they stumble at the same critical moment in the Ruy Lopez — the move Edward loves so much that he sings about it every time the board arrives there (“Edward’s Song”). Nia has come the closest, twice. This week the whole group has worked it out together. They arrive ready to win.
Edward doesn’t show.
They wait. They joke about how impossibly old he is and swear, with total conviction, that they will never get that way themselves (“When I’m Older Than I Am”). The waiting stretches, and the joking curdles into something truer: everyone in their lives is in a hurry to fold them into miniature adults, and nobody has asked whether they want it (“I’m Not a Man”). When they finally walk to his address, they find he isn’t there. No forwarding word. Nothing to explain it. They never learn where Edward went, or whether he’s all right — only that the square where he should be is empty. Back at the board, they turn over the one thought none of them can set down: that he mattered, and he’s gone (“The Only Real Thought”).
Then a small child wanders up and asks what they’re playing. The group looks at the board, at each other — and begins to explain where the pieces go.
Written for a class-sized ensemble; every number is sung by the full group, with lines traded across the cast rather than assigned to soloists. Edward may sing alone only in his own number, and only in the flashback game that opens the show — after that, the kids carry the score, which is the point: by the last scene they’re doing the teaching. Running time approximately 30 minutes.
THE SONGS:
Every Piece In Its Place
Edward’s Song
When I’m Older Than I Am
I’m Not a Man
The Only Real Thought