Plenty of comics get good material from their parents’ behaviour, and plenty of comics talk politics. Seldom before have those species of comedy been cross-bred – but then not all comics have a story to tell as eye-opening as Olga Koch’s. She is the daughter of a provincial mayor in the USSR, briefly turned deputy PM of Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Alfred Koch cooked up the “voucher privatisation” scheme that channelled Soviet state assets into the hands of the oligarchs. As Olga says, that’s a hell of dad fact for a teenage daughter to have in reserve when she needs to win a family argument.
Her debut Edinburgh show (she was shortlisted for best newcomer) tells her parents’ story in flashback from the time, four years ago, that her dad went alarmingly awol from his Moscow apartment. It’s part storytelling, part family album, and part Clive James on TV mockery of Russian advertising. I found those latter sections a little condescending. But given what her dad has suffered, and continues to suffer, at Russia’s hands, you can’t blame Koch – Russian-born, American-educated – for taking potshots in the other direction.
Her story ends with Olga’s visit to a democracy museum in Yekaterinburg, when she starts to see dad’s experiences through a new lens – cueing a climactic homily about truth, lies and the need to testify. The show is often more fascinating than funny, and is overdependent for laughs on found footage. It leaves you with little idea of what kind of comedian Koch will become. But she’s a spirited and confident host, and her story – of a normal family caught up in, then tossed out of Russian history – is remarkable.
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