Josie Long presents us with a show in two parts - a looser, more traditionally stand-up based first act, and then a tighter second part, which is a rerun of her Edinburgh show from earlier this year.

Long guides us through a snapshot of her life, taking in parenting and the research into pre-history she’s been doing. The show is full of charming moments, satisfying call backs and some beautifully judged comic beats. Long is, like the megafauna she describes, wildly charismatic, and the political content in particular went down well with the Oxford audience. I particularly enjoyed her lightly berating us for not laughing enough at her takedown of car culture. “I’ve seen you pricks with your cargo bikes” - I had in fact ridden a cargo bike to the theatre that very night. I do not mind being called a prick by Josie Long, though - her stage presence is disarmingly warm, and there some moments of real glee in the show. At its best, it felt as resoundingly human as the cave paintings she was discussing.

However, it struck me that the heart of the show really lay in the more domestic struggles she outlined and not in the bigger picture politics that made up the finale. The concussion she suffered recently, the painful choice to separate from her children’s father, the near death experience of a family hamster - all of these ideas felt resonant, funny and truly connected to the idea of extinction and rebirth. The finale as it stood lacked that depth, veering off into an optimistic political tirade that didn’t feel earnt. I agree with the politics, and I enjoyed the showmanship of it (there was some impressive use of drawing and dark lights) but I did get the sense I was being manipulated by the ending, and I’d have preferred a resolution that felt more tied to the content of the show, and possibly closer to home.