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Max and Ivan Are... Con Artists

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     'Crying with laughter' doesn't quite cover it. If I smoked, I would have needed a cigarette, but instead settled for a walk, a twix and bashing out a review. Like the second album, the second Fringe show is a difficult thing to pull off, but somehow from Holmes and Watson last year to the crack team of Con Artists they portray this year, Max and Ivan have kept the standard breathtakingly high with a show so impeccable it's difficult to know exactly where to start.
     Having developed a talent for moulding their two faces into a crowd of characters, Max and Ivan fly full-throttle into their double-act, with not two but eight main characters, each distinguished by accent, pose, expression and relationship to one another, so that a six-way hotel phonecall is pulled off astonishingly well with a certain sweaty concentration. Even this early in the run the show is flawless, snapping forwards and backwards through time with the smoothest tech-work this side of the Royal Mile. It's a shame the venue is small, but a pleasure to be in such an intimate space witht he two tireless comedians, especially when a lothario Argentinian picks on whoever happens to be in his eye-line in the front row.
     It's not good comedy etiquette to reveal the details of a show, so all I can do is encourage you to hunt down a ticket however you can. And bring some tissues.

EDIT: That six-way phonecall scene? Where the pair jump up and down into and out of different characters with only a couple of chairs to support them?
           One chair broke. Still brilliant.
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