To give Olga Koch credit, in her new hour, Comes From Money, she does tackle a difficult set of subjects - privilege, wealth, class - especially for a Fringe audience, especially in the current climate. And whilst her mea culpa is mildly enjoyable, even so, it is alienating. Credit where credit is due, this is a minefield of a topic and whilst Koch is brave for addressing it, she maybe doesn’t quite do it in the right way and may have set herself too difficult of a task for an hour of stand-up.
Brave
For such a high-energy start, it quickly dips to a kind of uneasy low, and the comedy happens in a vacuum with the odd spike in energy, which are far between. Wealth and privilege are very difficult subjects; they're broad and require a lot of context to fully explain the sociological conditions that led to these attitudes and class systems. It’s a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation that she finds herself in. And whilst Koch does attempt to explain it, in her explanation the comedy gets left behind to an extent, as she resorts to simplifications and stereotypes to explain something as complicated as the fall of the Soviet Union, the privatisation of Russia’s natural resources, the American Dream, and the British class system. These are abstract concepts that speak to our heads rather than our hearts and potential lived experience of the system in any of these countries.
This show is classic Koch, it posseses all the building blocks for one of her shows; a fresh perspective of an under-discussed issue built through sharp observations and oasis-like illusionary images to try start a discussion on how the system doesn’t work. But instead of this empowering hour, it feels a little reductive. In this hour, Koch really isolates herself onstage. Is this relatable? No.
