18/09/2024 Dundee Fringe
Icebreaker rolled a natural 20 with their show ‘Dicebreaker: A Live D&D Adventure’ last night at the Keiller Centre as part of the Dundee Fringe programme. Icebreaker is a local promoter of comedy, spoken word, and performance. The cast of ‘Dicebreaker’ was comprised of four of their premier performers: Chris Beattie, Scott Redmond, Andy Bullick, and Luis Alcada.
Each of these names holds promise for hilarity, and in combination with the glorious, and famously user-friendly, system of D&D 5e it was truly a perfect recipe for chaos. Chris Beattie steered the show with his seasoned DM skillset, no doubt an impressive feat (haha, get it?) considering his three players were doing what players do best and completely breaking the plot. Each personality shone through lovingly crafted characters, including a teacup who had been turned into a man via a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ style curse wherein he was the only piece of tableware that had never in the first place been human (Redmond); a dragonborn warlock who just wanted to dance- whilst their evil patron craved and demanded death (Alcada); and a very old, very New York vampire who just wanted to die (Bullick). The character commitment was impressive, and in all honesty had me completely in stitches. From the moment that Alcada entered in a sprinkle of glitter, to Bullick pulling out sunscreen and applying it onstage, Redmond rolling to drown a cook in her own pot of soup ( a successful roll and an unsuccessful soup).
It’s difficult not to enjoy funny people having fun and whilst the players were very new to the system, the resulting show was full of giggles, tangents, and vivacious storytelling. The team engaged in a pub brawl, left bodies in their wake, and used the power of manners to complete the adventure in only an hour- a record time in the world of D&D! A longer show would have been welcome, but the constraint of time did not interfere with the riotous performance. The cast was firing on all cylinders, whimsical and electrically funny; you could really tell that this was a group of people who were not only hysterical in their own right, but who bounced off of and deeply enjoyed one another in performance. It felt like playing D&D with your mates, if your mates’ jokes landed all the time (more of the time).
I thoroughly enjoyed the show and its combination of two of my great loves- D&D and glitter. Hopefully, we will be able to see the cast return for more live D&D, but until then Icebreaker hosts regular shows in and around Dundee so I would highly recommend you check them out!
Written by Hannah Linda Hamilton, Editor-in-Chief of The Magdalen
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