★★★★☆

Review by Natalia Milne. Venue 515. Monkey Barrel Comedy – Monkey Barrel 1.

Olga has achieved a lot in her thirtieth year of life: it has been a year of academic pursuit, travel and sexual exploration. She assures all women who are feeling the pressure of that milestone that being thirty is actually younger than being in your late twenties. Your life is the same, and you can shed all the anxieties and expectations you place on yourself to achieve a certain lifestyle before hitting that milestone birthday. A very reassuring message for a woman of 28 (the oldest I will ever be, according to Olga).

Much of the show is centred on the fascinating subject of parasocial relationships. This is a term coined by social scientists in the 1950’s to explain the one-sided relationship audiences had with TV presenters and personalities. Olga examines how, through social media, we are exposed to a volume of personal information that thirty years ago we only would have access to if we had a close personal friendship with the individual. This tricks our brain into believing we know these people. I think all of us can (on some level) relate to this. When you really take a moment to think about it, the fact that we can access the wedding pictures of a person we haven’t seen since school is wild. The next level of this are the podcast hosts whose words beam directly into our ears, or the influencers whose opinions we trust and with whom we would definitely be friends with if we met.

Olga then explains the concept of Reply Guys’ – something that any woman on the internet is painfully aware of. For the uninitiated, these are men who will comment on every single tweet (say what you like Elon, it is still a tweet), photo, or post often with an uncomfortable degree of over-familiarity. Olga manages to show compassion and understanding as to what it is that is making their brains short circuit. These topics are discussed and woven through a personal anecdote about an ill-fated trip to Japan, which is one of the highlights of the show.

In the closing moments of the show Olga shares a voice recording that is very raw and vulnerable and makes the audience hear the truth of what she is saying. She speaks honestly about humiliation and the methods we use to deflect from our feelings.  It’s a brief moment in-between the jokes and laughs, and it’s something I have been thinking about in the days since the show.

The final reveal really ties everything together in a very satisfying way. My advice would be to go and spend an hour with Olga if you want to think, learn and laugh. Just don’t be weird and parasocial about it.