Chicago improv turns World Cup fever into “The Soccer Show”

The Soccer – At Annoyance Theatre, Chicago comedians Ian Mullen and Max Kantor are running a World Cup-themed improvisation show every Saturday through July 18, mixing match-week jokes with chaotic sketches—vuvuzelas included—and aiming to make soccer feel fun even for peo

Every Saturday, Chicagoans looking for a break from the usual sports chatter get something stranger—and louder—than a typical watch party.

At Annoyance Theatre. the World Cup-themed improv variety show “The Soccer Show” is being curated by comics Ian Mullen and Max Kantor. with performances built around tongue-in-cheek banter and commentary on the week’s matchups. The premise is simple: tickle dedicated soccer fans. while giving locals whose experience with the game mostly comes from social media posts a reason to stick around.

Mullen. the show’s director and co-host. said the project was in the works for a year. after he looked at the calendar and predicted a “soccer crazy summer.” He and Kantor initially planned on penning a soccer-themed musical. but with time running short they shifted to a format that could change every week as the tournament progressed.

“The idea was basically, what can we do that’s fun? I don’t want to say an easy lift, but something that’s fun and can change every week with the World Cup. And here we are,” Mullen said.

The show leans into the kind of improvisational flexibility improv performers love—and into the specific bits that make World Cup culture recognizable. One recurring segment plays with the absurdities of watching games: how many David Beckham commercials in the row you can count during a game. which Mullen said comes out to five. Another riff centers on “vuvuzelas,” the extremely loud long-horned instrument that became a defining fan accessory during the 2010 World Cup.

“We do a thing right now where we invite a local band called the ‘Vuzelas,’ where all of our cast members come out with their own vuvuzelas, and it is so loud in the small theater, it’s deafening,” Mullen said. “I feel like that’s what our show is in a nutshell.”

Kantor described the whole thing as controlled chaos, then added that it’s “avant-garde a little bit,” a nod to both of their comedy backgrounds. Even with the noise and the weirdness, the show’s goal is clear: it has to work for people who don’t know the sport the way longtime fans do.

To make the experience accessible, Kantor said the show opens with a World Cup recap. In that portion, Mullen recaps what happened—“the games, the stars, things like that”—before the format turns more personal and more freewheeling.

“Then, I just recap what happened to me and my personal life,” Kantor said. “We do a really nice job of not making the show just full of inside jokes of soccer.”

“The Soccer Show” runs Saturdays at the Annoyance through July 18.

The duo’s approach has a yin-and-yang quality on purpose. Mullen is a big-time soccer fan and still plays weekly in an adult league. where he said he recently banned Kantor from attending matches because his team has labeled him a jinx. Kantor. by contrast. is the typical American casual fan. and his comedy comes from insisting there must be a better way to do the sport.

“One thing we do every week is push boundaries,” Kantor said. “Soccer with a ball is boring. It’s been done for hundreds of years. So we covered the stage in astro turf, and Ian and I play soccer with a different object each week. Have you ever played soccer with a one-gallon jug of water?”

That “one different object every week” promise is part of the entertainment, but the show also builds community by bringing in weekly guest appearances from local soccer “luminaries.”

Mullen said the first guest was his physical therapist. He explained that he found out he has a torn labrum because of playing soccer in college, and that his therapist came to the stage and dry needled him—something he called horrible.

The next guest, billed as a player for the Chicago Fire, turned out to be an actor on NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” who was actually cast in NBC’s “Chicago Med,” but had all of his lines cut when the show aired. Mullen said they ended up doing his cut scenes on stage.

For all its scattered, wonky energy, the structure is meant to deliver the same feeling as the World Cup itself: excitement, surprise, and momentum.

“We treat the World Cup as an umbrella topic,” Kantor said. “There’s so much that falls underneath, so we’re embracing the vibe and the spirit of it, versus like ‘let’s talk about the technique of the game.’”

In a season when fandom often means arguing about tactics and scores, Mullen and Kantor are choosing something else—turning the tournament into a weekly improv experiment, where the joke is that soccer can be anything, as long as it’s loud enough to make strangers laugh together.

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