The Ice Hole

This is an English version of an award-winning French comedy from 2021, Les Gros Patinent Bien, by Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan. That was a story which began with boxes: in the corner of a rehearsal room, deprived of stage and audience by the pandemic, Guillois and Martin-Salvan – long-term friends who work as a double act – came across some cardboard and began to improvise situations using the apparently thankless material.

They reworked the original for an Anglophone audience at last year’s Edinburgh Festival as The Ice Hole. 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; and it’s well worth an evening of your time.

Matthew T Corbett directs Sadiq Saboowala and Patrick Albrecht for Complices Théâtre. There are further shows on 4 and 5 May.