Some comics alight on a new theme for each show. Josie Long’s theme remains the same: her shows are a journal of her personal and political life (the two always closely intertwined) since last we spoke. Re-Enchantment traces her journey from the crushing disappointment of the 2019 general election, via lockdown, to the rebirth of her optimism on Kenmure Street in her adopted home town of Glasgow, where community protests stopped the arrest of two men for alleged immigration violations. Now 40 years into a life of hard political knocks and demands she start living in “the real world”, idealism and irrepressible fun are never far from the surface when Long takes to the stage.
So it is here, in a show outlining Long’s personal milestones (second child; move to Scotland; ADHD diagnosis) before the lens widens to address life under, and resistance to, the endless Tory supremacy. If her 10 minutes on lockdown feel out-of-date, the ADHD material is self-aware and delightfully silly, as she engages in pretend-childish tit-for-tat with her neurotypical oppressors. An encounter with an angry Glaswegian pest controller prompts ruminations on the culture wars, the real reasons why people feel less free these days, and a droll pidgin-Spanish sketch puncturing those rightwing bogeymen, “the woke brigade”.
