The Out to Lunch festival kicked off yesterday, not with a bang but with a giggle. You don’t expect a lot of belly laughs from a Kevin McAleer gig but a constant stream of psychadelic musings on the absurdity of the world and yesterday’s audience at the Black Box had their idea of reality stretched every which way like a Davina’s Workout DVD for the imagination.
Kevin has resurrected his famous slide show for a trip back to the 1980s – at one point I expected Dr Who to enter the venue – but his one-liners, quips, non sequiturs (McAleer doesn’t do jokes) were as funny as they were back when men wore moustaches like something out of Magnum PI and women wore lycra mini-skirts and thon McAleer boy was appearing on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live.
The set did so its age at one point with a mash-up of Star Wars and Ireland’s World Cup campaign of 1994, long before the word “mash-up” was even invented, but this was one of the best segments of the show, followed by a pair of pugilistic kangaroos.
Sorry, what did I say about belly laughs?