In these times, we’ve never needed the arts more.
Enter Josie Long, a left-wing comedian with a licence to tell stories.
Long laments on the enormity of living in an era that often feels scary; rising prices, rising fascism, genocide, hatred. For someone who cares about the world, and the creatures that are its current custodians, it can be overwhelmingly exhausting.
From the big to the small, we zoom in on Long, just one human of the over eight billion currently alive, in the bathroom of her Glaswegian tenement flat. She’s discovering, at the age of 43, her first grey hair. In the bathtub, sits her infant daughter, the most innocent of sponges, ready to soak up views about the world. Long scrabbles to access a child-friendly version of her inner dialogue, amidst existential angst. Are we all just slowly dying? What if I’m no longer attractive? Why does the man who commissions for Live at the Apollo not like me? She asks – wordlessly, in that moment. Verbally, she finds herself celebrating the incoming steel stripes as an advancement. A levelling-up. From the bathtub, her daughter exclaims, ‘Go Mummy!’. ‘Go Mummy, go Mummy,’ Long repeats, tiredly.
There’s much on parenting in troubling times and how to explain things that are huge to humans that are so very small. When a global pandemic shuts the playground, what’s a co-habiting, co-parenting, co-just-about-existing human to do? She expands on the time of the evening when the wheels fall off the ‘age-appropriate political views’ bus, and the truth of the world starts to slip in, enlightening an enraged, engaged super-youth. Be warned, bosses and bankers – mess with the tiny pacifist army of left-wing, loose-limbed infants at your peril.
Amidst madness, thank goodness for extinct, gigantic megafauna. We could elaborate, but Long tells it best. They were blimmin’ huge, are no longer here, and yet…
Once again, we zoom in, this time on a modern day hamster in a Glaswegian tenement flat. Is he breathing? Who could say. A tiny creature that is both impossibly insignificant, but also full of love and sentiment.
Now Is The Time Of Monsters is an endearingly familiar, quietly funny show on the art of being human in trying times. What it lacks in real belly laughs, it makes up for in sheer spirit. Long feels like the sort of person you’d have a very enjoyable evening with over a drink (or two) at the pub, a quality that this reviewer greatly appreciates. Having Long as both the support act and the main event somewhat dilutes the message of her powerful, carefully-crafted, primary set, but this is a minor criticism on an otherwise very enjoyable show.
Now Is The Time Of Monsters ends in the most magical way. A beam of optimism, self-acceptance and finding joy in the everyday. An ode to the precious insignificance of our existence. We won’t spoil it for you, so you’ll have to see it for yourself. Fans of Long won’t be disappointed.
Now may be the time of monsters, but goodness, we have hope.
Reviewed on 23 October 2025.
