LIST.CO.UK/FESTIVAL
The Wrestling {FRONT}
LET’S GET READY TO rumble!
A host of comedy’s biggest stars are turning nasty for a one-night only ‘wrestletainment’ royal rumble. Julian Hall talks to organiser Max Olesker – a comic and former pro wrestler – about his spandex dreams
T he Wrestling won’t be the last Fringe show to trace its roots back to loose talk in the bar of The Pleasance, but its fusion of stand- up and professional wrestling, in the name of a semi-improvised, good-versus-evil romp, makes this mid-Festival spectacle quite the curiosity.
The wheeze came up last year when sketch performers Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez were grappling with the idea of mixing the disciplines, both distinct but both, of course, united by moments of unashamed showing off. Other comedians overheard, and before you could say ‘twitter rumour’ the idea was as sure as spandex.
‘wrestletainment’, which they designed ‘to give anyone who has never been to a wrestling match the feel of what it’s like’. Before the audience delivers its verdict, The Wrestling has enjoyed a huge response from fellow comedians including Brendon Burns, Andrew Maxwell, Russell Kane, Matthew Crosby, Patrick Monahan, Angelos Epithemiou, Jessica Ransom, Nick Helm, Tom Rosenthal, Colin Hoult and Penny Dreadful Humphrey Ker, who will be playing a 1970s Nazi wrestler called The Vinyl Solution.
‘SOME OF THEM HAVE REALISED WHAT THEY’VE AGREED TO’
‘I carried it on until my second year at university, combining drinking and wrestling and studying, but not at the same time. I started to write comedy material on a wrestling tour of Italy and teamed up with Ivan later after seeing him do some stand-up.’ Now playing their second Edinburgh Fringe as Max and Ivan, the duo are excited about their Festival venture into what one might call
‘When they were getting “in-the- zone” there was a wonderful moment where some of them realised the enormity of what they had agreed to, for example performing a “spinebuster”, where you send your opponent into the ropes, lift them up by their waist and then grab them by their legs and drive them down into a pinned position on the crashmat.’
Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 15 Aug, 11pm, £10. 11–18 Aug 2011 THE LIST 17
It wasn’t merely idle bar-room chatter though; Max Olesker was the UK’s youngest pro wrestler when he was 15. While some teenage boys were more taken with an Xbox or the six-yard box on a football field, the young Max was attending the Frontier Wrestling Alliance’s Wrestling School (‘Europe’s finest wrestling school,’ Olesker explains to me), in his home town of Portsmouth. Soon Max Olesker was Max Voltage, the Human Dynamo, and playing church halls to 2000-seaters around the UK and encountering the cream of the wrestling crop from here and abroad.
Appearing as wrestlers but also trainers, commentators and reporters too, the comics will be joined by renowned pros including PAC (‘The Man That Gravity Forgot’), Johnny Moss, Dave Moralez and Mark Haskins – and Olesker will reprise his Max Voltage role, for which he has recently trained up to four times a week. Meanwhile, the other comedians taking part won’t be thrown into the ring cold either. Many of them took a course beforehand at the Lucha Libre Wrestling School in Bethnal Green, East London. ‘They were quite literally taught the ropes for something that takes a year to train for,’ explains Olesker.
F E S T I V A L