Best Newcomer (2022) winner Lara Ricote returns with her third show, billed as her “smartest and stupidest yet”. Smartest? Maybe – it’s built around an exploration of three Delphic maxims (‘know thyself’, ‘nothing in excess’ and ‘surety then ruin’). Stupidest? Definitely not. Because while the Mexican-American clown has perfected her wide-eyed and frenetic persona, this is a shrewdly crafted hour of stand-up.
A structure of three acts, three microphones and those three maxims never fully coheres (with the exception of a summing-up song to the tune, naturally, of “Tom’s Diner”). But that’s because Ricote doesn’t want it to, leaving much of its connective tissue in the aether.
Through stories about open relationships, being hard-of-hearing and a fraught encounter with a museum guard, her goal is to evoke the rapture of being alive, if you’re open to it. It’s a grand goal, and one she hits sometimes. But the truest joys of a Ricote show are the moments of untethered glee in, say, a garbled rendition of “My Anaconda”, or a gloriously overdone impression of two canoes crashing.
Some repeated gags (like periodically dribbling water down her front) wear thin. But in this whirlwind of a show, if any element grates, it’s only a moment or two before you’re pulled back in.
Lara Ricote: INKLING, Monkey Barrel Comedy, until 30 Aug (not 17), 5.40pm