Lady Rizo: Red, White & Indigo (MICF)

Emerging from the darkness behind the audience in a spangly off-the-shoulder number and a shock of blonde curls, New York cabaret queen Lady Rizo took to the Spiegeltent stage in true diva fashion.

Twisting The Star-Spangled Banner to her own devices - her already husky delivery regularly diverts into animalistic grunts, snorts and growls replete with staged top note struggles not unlike Linda Blair's exorcism - she announced that this was her apology tour. An apology for her very existence as an American in these trying times of the "Pussy Grabber in Chief" that once more has her questioning her bad relationship with her birth nation as the flag hangs upside down in Mayday fashion behind her.

This witty announcement has barely settled before it's flipped. Talking of the show's UK run, Rizo stealthily shifts from a gentle tease about how British people are always apologising for something or other into a full-blown stab at the Empire having plenty to apologise for. And just as that knowing laugh ripples around the wooden, mirrored interior, she twists the knife again, this time sticking it in her hosts, noting that Australia takes a very, very long time indeed to apologise. 

A force of nature, barely restrained, Rizo whirls her way through reworked numbers from Leonard Cohen to Portishead as well as her own torch songs like The Ghost of The Chateau Marmont, all hurled into a maelstrom of unbridled sexuality and political commentary.

Championing those who have been betrayed by the old, dead white men of colonialism, from people of colour to the queer community, disabled people to slightly more than half the planet who identify as female, the small but perfectly formed audience on a chilly Thursday was rapt from the get-go.

All this happens seamlessly. Best recognised as the classic Nancy Sinatra track reanimated by Kill Bill, though in truth originally a Sonny and Cher number, Rizo recuts Bang Bang Frankenstein's monster-style with D'Angelo's Shit, Damn, Motherfucker, artfully challenging America's insanely charged gun debate, while joking darkly that perhaps the second amendment lovers are scared the Brits are coming back.

Though the President is never named, and nor is his favourite tyrant, Rizo's every arch of Olympic-standard eyebrows and lipsticked snarl has plenty to say about both. "I used to be able to finish a show without three executive orders and a constitutional crisis happening," she bemoans at one stage. At another, she recalls her first kiss while on a teenage exchange to Moscow for a surreal cross-cultural musical gig. There's also an impassioned plea for immigrants and refugees, a la Lady Liberty, iPhone torches required. 

It's not all fire and fury, however. There's something strangely sweet about an older gent whisked from the audience for a Russian kissing game that falls on no deal but is sealed nonetheless by Rizo, and by flashes of vulnerability as she hopes for larger crowds as the show winds its way to the final day of MICF.

More cabaret than straight-up comedy, this festival is big enough to hold many ideas and Rizo is a burning-bright highlight. In a world that feels startlingly off-kilter, you'd be mad not to sign up for this anthemic hour-and-a-bit with a martini-lubricated trooper who marches gloriously into her disco encore, sending us dancing empowered into the night.

Lady Rizo presents Red, White & Indigo until 22 Apr at The Famous Spiegeltent at Arts Centre Melbourne, part of the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.