Paris’s Le Fils du Grand Réseau return to the Edinburgh Fringe with ‘Les Gros Patinent Bien’, or ‘The Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy’ for their sojourn to Scotland. Other than the title, language is mostly a non-issue, as this double act is mostly conducted in a nonsense language, which sounds Scandinavian, but is in fact nonsense.
The plot is simple, a great actor has taken the stage, determined to recount their grand adventure from the fjords of Iceland to the Spanish wildnerness. A keen fisherman, he once plucked a mermaid from an ‘Ice Hole’ and found himself charmed, or perhaps cursed into pursuing the elusive creature to the ends of the earth. It’s a barmy tale, but the joy of ‘Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy’ lies after the colon. For, with the tireless assistance of performer, the great actor will re-enact his journey by the medium of cardboard.
This is the show for all those who remember days playing with cardboard boxes around Christmas, whilst despairing parents looked one wondering why they didn’t hit up a packaging supplier to furnish Santa’s sack. The Great Actor, a grossly entitled ass of a thespian will spend the majority of the performance with their backside planted on one box, centre stage. When walking, running, swimming, or jumping, he will do so from this sedentary position.
Meanwhile his overworked assistant stretches the creative possibilities of cardboard to the absolute limit. The sheer inventiveness, ingenuity and humour built into the vast armory of pre-prepared cardboard props is astounding. Everything from ocean liners to corner shops are summoned into life with deceptive ease, whilst the assistant pops into cardboard scales to play the mermaid, and just a pair of lycra pants to create everything from sardonic seagulls, to fish.
The cast are splendid: Olivier Martin-Salvan alternating with Jonathan Pinto-Rocha and Pierre Bénézit & Pierre Guillois alternating with Grégoire Lagrange and Édouard Penaud. Information is not provided on the cast for particular evenings, but suffice to say the elect pair created an odiously pompous clown, and a crowd-winning, chameleon of an assisting hero when theQR stopped in.
The show requires an intermission, not only to give the assistant a needed break, but more importantly to clear the stage of the overflowing wealth of expended cardboard devices. The team who spend the post-show resetting ‘The Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy’ shebang deserve however much they are being paid (and probably more, knowing the arts).
One can only imagine the relentless rehearsals it took for the actors to learn the sequence, not only of the complex physical theatre and comedy, but in deploying the ranks of cardboard props not only correctly, but with such style. There’s a rich seam of super-droll comedy running through the show, which makes submarines and shark-fins one minute, and just writes ‘tree’ on a box another.
There is no way for a review to fully capture the wonder of this show, an adventure that takes to the skies, seas, and frozen lakes, whilst simultaneously bringing the audience to hate the ‘great actor’ and sympathise with the assistant. To say that the story goes places you won’t predict is a serious understatement, and may, or may not have to do with the ‘serial killer’ b-plot. You read correctly.
So there we are. The Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy is simply one of the best, most imaginative, most surprising shows playing this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. A word to the ticket-buying wise: join the queue early for the show, it’s attracting huge audiences, and you want to be in and seated before the show is forced to begin.
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