Olga Koch has turned 30, and – per the opening moments of her show Prawn Cocktail – she loves it. Sassy and sex-positive, it’s all swaggering talk about STIs, threesomes and bisexual broadmindedness. Such is the settled sense of self that comes with early middle age, you might think. But Koch travels a long way in the ensuing 55 minutes, to New Zealand and back (twice) and towards a more complex picture of her self-assertion and the delights of hookup culture. So much the better for audiences, as Koch underpins this tale of a transnational tryst with front-foot jokes and bright ideas in just the right dosage.
You’re in the hands, from the off, of a comic in full control of her material. Koch is such an authoritative figure here, her show expertly assembled to get the most out of a story that combines casual sex, her recent master’s on parasocial relationships – and a post-Hannah Gadsby pivot into comedy as a trauma displacement mechanism.
