Review: Oliver Coleman: The Prawning

Oliver Coleman is here to warn us about a threat more terrifying than climate change, coronavirus and another season of Married at First Sight. It’s 'The Prawning', a devastating ecological disaster forewarned by his sea-faring grandfather, Dickie, who warned that a colony of prawns would rise from the ocean to take over the world.

It’s a wonderfully bizarre premise for an hour of utter silliness as Coleman moves between his paranoid conspiracy-loving persona, a prawn from the future trapped in a recurring dream, a lighthouse and a carrot baby with fast-paced energy. Each sketch is as ridiculous and successful as the last, and there is hardly a moment to breath from laughing between costume changes.

Coleman’s energy is infectious and his crowd work light-hearted and disarming, without ever making his audience feel uncomfortable. Coleman is a rising star of absurdism and this is the kind of distinctive independent comedy that Fringe is all about.