Critically acclaimed Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated duo Max & Ivan will embark on a brand-new UK tour with Commitment, following their return to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time in three years. The duo’s first fully autobiographical show will be directed by triple Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominee Kieran Hodgson. The tour will take in an initial 13 dates, beginning in Salford at The Lowry on 19th January 2020 and concluding at The Stand, Glasgow on 9th February 2020.
Commitment is the true story of how Max, as Ivan’s Best Man, attempted to reunite Ivan’s teenage band (Voodoo 7:2, the premier ‘art rock post-punk funk’ group in mid-noughties Liverpool), for one final gig. It’s a show about dreaming big, growing up, and trying - but ultimately very much failing - to make it in the band.
This all new show melds fast-paced visuals (including a wealth of embarrassing adolescent photos) with razor-sharp gag writing, classic double-act dynamics, and a smattering of virtuoso multi-character performance. At its heart, the show is a storytelling hour about Max & Ivan’s real-life friendship, and the lengths you’ll go to (if you’re Max) in order to pull off the best night of Ivan’s life.
Max and Ivan said: "This is our favourite show yet! It's all about our real-life friendship - one we intend to test to its very limits, via a series of gruelling drives and ill-advised service-station dinners as we traverse the UK."
Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez have performed internationally, including at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (where they are Best Show Nominees), in the US at SXSW, UCB Sunset in LA, and Brooklyn’s Union Hall, as well as having toured throughout the UK. Their previous live shows include Our Story (2016), The End (2015) and The Reunion (nominated for Best Show in the 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Awards). They are also the creators of the hugely successful sell-out supershow The Wrestling – where the world’s best comedians step into the ring and actually wrestle alongside actual (enormous) professional wrestlers – which has played to sold-out audiences in Edinburgh and Melbourne since scooping the Edinburgh Comedy Awards Panel Prize in 2011. At last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, they debuted Max & Ivan’s Prom Night – an anarchic, interactive, 1950’s high school prom show-cum-party - to a sell-out, thousand strong crowd in ‘Assembly High’, a purpose-designed venue.
Max & Ivan created, wrote and starred in BBC Radio 4 sitcom The Casebook of Max & Ivan, which has attracted guest stars including Matt Lucas, June Whitfield, Reece Shearsmith and Jessica Hynes. They also created a Comedy Blap for Channel 4 based on their hit live show The Reunion, and appear in BBC Two’s acclaimed comedy W1A as Ben and Jerry. Other individual credits include Blandings, Drifters and Peep Show (Max) and The Mimic, Drunk Histories and Bleak House Guest (Ivan). Along with Graham Dickson they co-founded The Free Association, London’s premier improv school.
Tickets for Max & Ivan’s UK tour of ‘Commitment’ go on sale at 10am on Friday 28th June at www.maxandivan.com/tour
Click here for dates.
Picture: Matt Crockett
