Josie Long @ Pleasance Dome

'Political', 'hopeful', and 'candid' are all words that have orbited alternative trailblazer Josie Long, so when she runs out, T-shirt pulled over her head, shouting about giant rats, there is a nervous anticipation hovering over the room. That’s before she illuminates drawings of prehistoric megafauna – giant creatures that roamed the earth 2.5 million years ago – by torchlight.

The opening feels loose and ramshackle, with Long skimming through facts about sloths, her ADHD diagnosis and a far-too-brief retelling of a recent brain injury she sustained. The comedy is tight but the form is a little slapdash, as if each routine is wrestling to become its own Edinburgh show. Ultimately it’s the giant wombats that win out, and the other potential themes of the show dissipate as abruptly as they arrive. 

Once the show gets rolling, it is beautifully crafted. Obscure animal observations are subtly weaved into a narrative of capitalism, consumerism and the destruction of the world. For every political assassination, there is an equally compelling segue into whales or ducks that keeps the comedy buoyant. 

Rooted in the animals of a different bygone world, Long’s narrative draws parallels between that lifetime and the present, weaving this web with homegrown stories of raising two daughters on a planet so distant from the one she is obsessing over while finding her own place within it. Here is where the comedy really gets into gear, with no line wasted. Each of Long's observations on the show's central motifs are intrinsically linked, circling back and turning the set into a luscious tapestry of old and new.

In the final moments of the show, you see that tapestry in full bloom and Long establishes herself once again as a master of merging the silly with the poignant.

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Josie Long: Now Is the Time of Monsters, Pleasance Dome (Queen Dome), until 24 Aug (not 13), 7pm, £13-18