It would be no surprise, given the times, if disabled comedian of colour Lara Ricote winning last year’s Edinburgh fringe best newcomer award was greeted with cynicism in some quarters. What is surprising, when we meet over Zoom to discuss her extraordinary 2022, is that those who refuse to take the award at face value include Ricote herself. “I’m thinking all the time about why everything has gone so well for me in such a small amount of time,” she says. “I know I should just be grateful for it, but at the same time, it’s tokenism. I notice that – and there’s lots of funny in it.”
I’m talking to the Mexican-American comic, who is based in Amsterdam, between two stints at London’s Soho theatre with her award-winning set, GRL/LATNX/DEF. Far from resting on her laurels, she’s fretting about whether to stick with the show’s Edinburgh version, or fix its flaws – including a subplot about climate anxiety that she struggled to integrate. Of 30 performances on the fringe, the perfectionist Ricote reports: “I had seven that were really funny. Most of the other ones were OK, and some were really bad.” If Ricote’s career doesn’t have lift-off from this point forward, we cannot blame complacency. Mind you, few who saw her in Edinburgh think her career lift-off is in any doubt whatsoever.
