In this theatre last year, Humphrey Ker had a huge hit with his second world war pastiche Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher. I was reminded of it when watching this enjoyable offering from last year's Edinburgh comedy award panel prize winners, the double act Max and Ivan. Like Ker's show, Max and Ivan Are … Con Artists is a drum-tight parody of an overfamiliar genre – in this case, the heist movie – whose script is packed with scrambled cliches and flights of absurdist fancy.
The Ocean's Eleven-style set-up sees Max Olesker's East End conman Jim ringing his old accomplices one by one, to assemble them for a final job. These include ace hacker Lavinia ("I've completed the internet on its hardest setting"), explosives ace Tim and his doting getaway driver Raoul, and a camp cat burglar called Graham. The plan is to infiltrate a Las Vegas casino run by Russian oligarch Dmitri, who lurks in his lair listening to an audio book of Fifty Shades of Grey read by Alan Bennett.
Swiftly, sweatily and with considerable skill in delineating their maverick band of characters, Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez flit between plots, subplots and flashbacks as the story careers to its convoluted denouement. The narrative is throwaway; the fun lies in their ebullient portraits of malevolent baddies, a barking mad architect, a high-end crim who purrs like Joanna Lumley and a cockney mastermind whose "father promoted unlicensed pigeon boxing and mother was a whelk". Audience contributions introduce a welcome random factor into a show that's otherwise as neatly choreographed as the heist it depicts. Max and Ivan are anarchic performers, yet the show still lacks jeopardy. There's not much more to this than a fun parody – but it supplies the fun in spades.
