Is this the most carbonated comedy at the Fringe this year? Probably. Because Mexican-American comedian Lara Ricote unleashes more fizz in an hour than the nearest Irn Bru production line.
How to sum up INKLING? Think screwball comedy meets show-off theatricality meets an interest in the classics, meets, well, what else have you got?
Ricote is our Katharine Hepburn here, riffing on Delphic maxims and dropping jokes about Oedipus to get us warmed up before unleashing a show that’s self-referential, smart and ambitious. It should probably come with footnotes.
INKLING is ostensibly about a break-up, but it also takes in the difference between deaf people and hard-of-hearing people (the camp Ricote fits into), why she thinks atheism is stupid, her need for mystery in life and an annoying miscommunication in a museum.
There’s also stuff about desire and despair and how the world is divided into “naked baby” people and “clothed baby” people.
Ricote ties this all together with a skein of words (so many words) and ideas and imagination, powered by a cartoonish Bugs Bunny energy that sees her jumping between characters, voices and three different microphones. At speed. Throw in blackouts in the room as a form of punctuation, a running skit with water and an impersonation of New York – the whole city, I’m saying – that is worth your money on its own.
Ricote is pushing herself here. Pushing her audiences, too. The result has a giddy effervescence that sweeps you along even if at times it’s difficult to keep up. And I haven’t even mentioned the mime sequence or the singing. The incredible singing. By the end of the show she’s rewriting Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner, whilst twirling out of her skirt.
This is smart fun. It will leave you feeling exhilarated, a little giddy and maybe even slightly drunk. Even if you’ve only been on soft drinks.
Monkey Barrel 3 until August 30 (except August 17)
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/lara-ricote-inkling
