Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The set for Olga Koch’s Fat Tom Cruise is clinical – almost sterile. Two brilliant white monoliths frame a horizontal one, like an altar, onto which extra information, chapter headings or jokes are projected in stark monochrome.

The design reflects a storytelling stand-up show that has been buffed to precision, with each routine having a very specific role in building her case. The full nature of the argument is not fully obvious until she reveals it, despite many clues, because we have been conditioned not to think that way.

She romps through various coming-of-age stories from her peripatetic past – born in Russia, educated at an American school in Surrey before studying computing in New York. 

The bullet points of this have been covered in previous shows, but here we get specific recollections, scheming to get her first French kiss at prom, parties at frat houses and the ‘hazing’ routines freshers had to endure to fit in, taking part in the model UN, the sensitive classmate teased for his poetry, and a wedding encounter with a crass Wall Street slicker. Each chapter is introduced with a recap of the fashions of the day, and divided by details of US legal cases that overturned gender discrimination, hinting at the show’s greater cause.

Koch has a sharp way of writing detail – summing up almost the entire student body of NYU with one pithily amusing image – or adding on silly asides, from puns to a takedown of David Guetta lyrics.

She’s seen so many problematic men that she describes herself as the Jane Goodall of this particular primate species. ‘It’s sad when girls have body issues but funny when men do,’ she observes at the start… a gender inequality that many a comedian has merrily exploited.

As always, Koch delivers with oodles of dynamic main character energy, a lively presentation full of swagger-filled phrases like, ‘Clean up on aisle this bitch!’ But it’s not always the main characters we should be looking at.

This is less directly personal than its hugely impressive taboo-confronting predecessor Olga Koch Comes From Money, but nonetheless has something significant to say, and a deceptively entertaining way of saying it.

Review date: 25 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard