The Ice Hole – A Cardboard Comedy

This production debuted for four performances in May and two in July; all sold out (deservedly). It’s now back for a run at Theatre by QE2 and these are its last two shows (at 3pm and 8pm).

It’s an English version of an award-winning French comedy from 2021, Les Gros Patinent Bien, by Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan. They reworked the original for an Anglophone audience at the Edinburgh Festival as The Ice Hole, and there were rave reviews for a show that has an imposing Shakespearian actor telling incredible stories of a man journeying through Europe under the curse of a mermaid he’d absent-mindedly caught in a fjord. The actor is accompanied by a put-upon flunky (maybe a stage manager?) who strives with the help of hastily-scribbled cardboard signs and boxes to help us understand the meaning of this journey …

It’s fun, mad as trumpets, with echoes of Monty Python, Laurel and Hardy, and the Mighty Boosh. Matthew T Corbett directs Sadiq Saboowala and Patrick Albrecht, two-time winners of the local Short+Sweet Dubai Theatre Festival, for Complices Théâtre.