Koch’s sensational 2024 show Olga Koch Comes From Money did something incredibly rare: it met a genuine taboo head-on and with candour, by tackling her own wealth and privilege. How do you follow that? With Fat Tom Cruise, her answer, it seems, has been to elevate every other element of what she’s offering.
This is a stand-up show, but its staging and ambitions share just as much with fringe theatre. On stage, Koch is joined by three glowy white monoliths: a time machine, taking us between the 1970s, the early 2000s and the present. What for? Well, unravelling what this intricate show is really about is its own business, as Koch first reveals who or what is ‘Fat Tom Cruise’, then how the show’s two strands – stories about her young dating and university life, and a series of 70s US civil rights cases – come together, and then a grand and punchy final reversal.
If you like your stand-up slick or improvisational, that’s not what Koch is offering here. This is an hour polished til it sparkles, then polished some more. The result is impressive and as funny as we’ve come to expect from Koch. But some Fringe-goers may find it just a little too shiny.
Olga Koch: Fat Tom Cruise, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug (not 29), 5.30pm