Fresh off the back of winning last year’s prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer, Lara Ricote is making her Melbourne debut amongst great expectations. Thankfully, her mile a minute set certainly lived up to the hype.
Lara says GRL/LATNX/DEF is her “minority show”, covering all the ways in which she’s marginalised by society. She hints that future shows might not be so heavy on these subjects, but to that, I say keep going! Lara’s multi-layered identity as a woman who’s equal parts Mexican, American and Venezuelan and also hard of hearing affords her a distinctive perspective – something Australia’s stand-up comedy scene could certainly use in spades.
No taboo is off limits for Lara, who seems to take pleasure in making us just a little bit uncomfortable as she muses on the likes of our planet’s impending doom and what it’s like to “pass” as white and able-bodied when you’re actually brown and “disabled lite”. Her personal stories might be niche, but they’re brimming with lessons we should all keep front of mind (“He’s not funny, he just has blue eyes and you have postcolonial trauma”).
The Westin, in all its Gatsby-esque luxury glory, made for something of a stuffy setting for Lara’s freshening barbs, which could have easily brought down the mood. But she was having none of that, instead playing into the awkward pairing with the skill of a true professional, pondering whether her jokes were too dirty for a place with “bendy stairs”.
Lara is the comedic equivalent of a tightrope walker – she gets as close to the line as humanly possible without losing her balance. This is exemplified by the parallel she draws between abortion and the wisdom of Marie Kondo… I’ll let you do the maths on that one. Each time she donned a pair of sunglasses, her much more serious alter-ego appeared, judging her every move and berating her for caring deeply about the climate crisis yet still focussing on comedy and doing “very little work” to help the earth.
She may joke about sounding like someone put her on 1.5 speed, but her frenzied demeanour was perfect for my busy brain, leaving me still processing well into the next outlandish anecdote. Her sharp notes on womanhood (“Birth control is like microdosing depression”) are counterweighted with long asides that could be mistaken for sub-optimal pacing. However, I reckon Lara knows exactly what she’s doing. You’ll leave feeling just a bit weird, but that’s the point. Spoilers: you might just get a flyer full of actual resources to tackle the climate crisis on your way out.
After some more knee-slapping comedy? Check out the regular comedy nights in Melbourne.
