With an almost-Homerian flare, The Ice Hole tells the story of a man travelling the world to find his true love – a mermaid named Sirena. Let’s be honest upfront: this isn’t an epic love story. It becomes obvious very quickly that Sirena’s plight is merely a veneer through which Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau can flex their creative muscles. However, their medium isn’t poetry or song; they manage to conjure up Icelandic fjords, the French alps, and even a tsunami using nothing more than the most humble of materials – cardboard.
While our hero (who perhaps is more of villain, given his penchant for killing off local fauna) maneuvers blithely through various lands, speaking almost exclusively in gibberish, his long-suffering assistant swaps out the props around him with increasing panic. Tasked with conveying not only the scenery, but also various background characters and even the weather, we feel the resentment between the two build until it spills over – with amusing consequences, of course.
The real marvel of The Ice Hole is the amount of work that has clearly gone into each scene; as the stage is flooded with lovingly-crafted individual cardboard hailstones, you can only imagine the hours of reset involved after the audience has gone home. And while cardboard is durable, it probably isn’t designed to withstand the abuse our performers subject it to – which suggests that either the cast is remaking props day after day, or they’re cycling through multiple sets. Either way, it’s impressive.
You can have too much of a good thing, though. The Ice Hole is quite a bit longer than the average Fringe offering, with a runtime of an hour and 15 minutes – and after a week of watching shows which mostly come in under the 50-minute mark, it does feel like it drags towards the end.
Still, this (card)boredom isn’t too disruptive. The show manages to end on a proverbial high, but a literal low, with our hero at the bottom of the ocean. Will he be reunited with Sirena? You’ll have to watch it to find out.