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 If her 10 minutes on lockdown feel out-of-date, the ADHD material is self-aware and delightfully silly, as she engages in pretend-childish tit-for-tat with her neurotypical oppressors.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”.
Act two digs deeper into the reasons for her move to Scotland, including the shrinking space down south for anything other than fatalism. Remembering her Ed Miliband fangirling back in the day, I was keenly awaiting Long’s take on Starmer, which is nicely judged: even enthusiasts for “Sir Keir” could hardly demur from her (very funny) analysis of his limited appeal. Or so I thought, until the first of two attention-grabbing heckles leapt to the Labour leader’s defence.
A late routine challenges the image of the 1970s as an historical low point – quite the opposite, says Long, cheerfully romanticising that era of perms, zero surveillance and “complicated plays” on TV. Her heckler may dissent, but I found it a pleasure to submit to Long’s stubborn faith in progressive prospects, and how deftly she deploys her own misadventures and wild-firing imagination to bring it to comic life on stage.
Tonight at Contact theatre, Manchester, then touring.
