Review – Mat Ricardo

Mat Ricardo is something of an anachronism. He follows in the tradition of the gentlemen jugglers, a performance style that was pioneered in the early twentieth century, while also trying to update the craft for modern sensibilities. It’s a balancing act in itself, between innovation and originality on the one hand, and loyalty and authenticity on the other, and one he manages with equal measures of deftness and self-deprecation. That alone should clue you in that something interesting is going on here, and indeed this is a show worth seeing.

When heckler interviewed Mat Ricardo, he told us if we saw his show we would take back everything we’d said about jugglers. It was a tall claim, but one he worked hard to substantiate. Ricardo takes out the juggling balls just long enough to show us he can use them before quickly packing them away again, because they are not the substance of his act. He is a cynic’s juggler, equipped with the comedic sensibilities of Rowan Atkinson, and he happily distances himself from the clichés of juggled swords (too dangerous) and juggled chainsaws (not dangerous enough). What he deals with instead is a nuanced level of risk that is much more terrifying for its transparency, and more impressive for its subtlety and artifice.

Which is not to say Ricardo didn’t fuck up. The premise of his bottle routine was great – something of a Get Off My Lawn to any bartender who’s thrown and caught 700mL of Smirnoff – but even in his own words that segment was, “A bit dropy.” And where the juggling was sometimes better for being raw and candid, the banter often came across as a smudge too scripted. Mat Ricardo is funny, in that bastard sort of way, but he was funniest when he ad-libbed or broke character, and it would have been delightful to see more of that fluidity in his repartee. But, all in, this was a fantastic show that was only more textured for its faults and idiosyncrasies.