one4review | On 12, Aug 2026

I gave Olga Koch five stars when this was a work in progress. Her show somehow gotten tighter and a little funnier.

What can I do? It’s an absolute diamond of a show, and exactly the type of thing people come to Edinburgh to see.

There’s a slight delay before the show begins, so Koch shakes hands with the entire front row and befriends someone next to the tech booth. Warmth and improvisation clearly aren’t difficult for someone about to embark on perhaps one of the most densely packed informative and joke-heavy shows at the Fringe.

Olga Koch really is a master storyteller and an exceptional stand-up.

Koch weaves together strands from her high-school first crush, her university life crashing into the world of an older graduate, and her relationship with her best friend. The story jumps backwards and forwards through time, but what was adorably clunky in the work-in-progress is now pretty much seamless.

This is a diamond that has been forged in fire. Nothing has been left to chance.

The punchlines come at an extraordinary rate. If you catch all the references*. There are jokes buried within jokes that are sometimes funnier than the audience has time to acknowledge, because the next one is already arriving. (* Without knowing who Gerard Butler is could leave you confused however)

Running through it all are three witty, documentary standard explanations of landmark American feminist cases.

At times, it feels like hearing spilled tea; at others, like watching a particularly scintillating documentary.

Koch bounces effortlessly between hilarious and enlightening, unpacking the clever strategies behind these cases in a playful, stupid-on-purpose voice — part unreliable narrator — while pausing to poke fun at the music and fashion of the time.

The climax caught me completely off guard the first time. Knowing it was coming didn’t diminish its power. I again found tears in my eyes.

Koch pulls apart her own earlier material and implicates those very jokes we have gladly laughed along with. She frames that guilt as her own, but such is the rapport she has built over the hour that I found myself happy to share it.

The finale is brave, kind and genuinely moving.

I gave the work in progress five stars.This is better.

If only there was some kind of award we could give?

★★★★★

Reviewed by Stephen “Sharpie” Sharp
Pleasance Courtyard
Until 30 August (not 29)
Various Times (1 hour)