1000 Tiny Birds

Olga Koch - Prawn Cocktail (preview)

ARGCOMFEST, 2023-07-02

I bump into Olga on the way into the venue, and we have a quick chat. I ask her how she’s feeling about Edinburgh, and she tells me she wrote the show this morning, so we’ll see. If that’s not an exciting prologue to an Edinburgh preview, I don’t know what is. In the event, I’m left jealous of her ability to pull that off, because this iteration of Prawn Cocktail feels very fleshed out and cohesive. Left to her own devices after a break up (ah to have seen both sides of this show), Olga ends up on a trip to Japan with a man from New Zealand she thought she liked at a wedding and only now again in person realises she doesn’t. It’s all very her, and she is brilliant at toying with the line of making unrelatable situations feel familiar without losing their edge. It’s nicely interspersed with some thoughts from her masters diss about parasocial relationships online, which I’m sure will be more neatly tied together in the final product. I imagine some of the voice notes will be dropped before Edinburgh, which is a shame, but probably for the best of this actually being a comedy show.