Out to Lunch festival: talks, comedy, music, theatre and great grub (2-26 January 2014)

The annual Out to Lunch festival in January starts the year with joy and hope This year’s programme is particularly strong with the corner of page after page folded over in the pocket-sized booklet. Lots and lots of lunchtime talks, comedy, music and theatre – together with evening events – in the festival this year.

All events are in the Black Box unless otherwise noted. The ticket price of weekday lunchtime events includes lunch.

Music

Thu 2 Jan at 1pm // String quartet Scala Strings – graduates of the Youth Ulster Orchestra – with classical and contemporary music. £6.

Fri 3 Jan at 1pm // Songtrist and violinist Niamh Dunne (in Irish trad band Beoga) playing material from her first solo album Portraits. With Sean Og Graham and Trevor Hutchinson. £6. [quick review]

Thu 9 Jan at 1pm // Chris Braniff is The Young Shadow as “this teen guitar prodigy from Larne” plays the hits from the 60s legends. Backed by The Shadowmen. £6

Thu 9 Jan at 8pm // Smoke Fairies are a duo with a “mix of ethereal vocal harmonies and swamp-land guitars … as seemingly contradictory as the rolling hills of the pair’s native Sussex and the foothills of the Appalachian mountains”. £8.

Fri 10 Jan at 1pm // Tucan’s musical genre-crossing instrumental tunes are familiar to Electric Picnic festival audiences with the interpretations of 90s and 00s dance classics. £6.

Sat 18 Jan at 3pm // Abbabelle Chvostek is a former Wailin’ Jenny and will be belting out her “joyful, anthemic, and unabashedly political collection of songs revealing her passion for social justice and musical activism”. £5.

Sun 19 Jan at 2pm // Northern Ireland’s LGBT choir QUIRE will fill the Black Box with contemporary hits and old favourites. £5

Comedy, Theatre & Spoken Word

Sun 5 Jan at 2pm // John Hegley – New & Selected Potatoes // Poet, comic, singer, songwriter and glasses-wearer …. with seriously funny, cleverly comic poems on everything from love, family, France, art and the sea to dogs, dads, gods, carrots, spectacles and – of course – potatoes. £8. [quick review]

Tue 7 Jan at 1pm and 8pm // Terry Christian: Naked Confessions of a Recovering Catholic lifts the lid on the outspoken TV presenters upbringing, Manchester, The Word and Celebrity Big Brother. £6 (1pm), £8 (8pm). [quick review]

Wed 8 Jan at 1pm // Mark Grist: Rogue Teacher tells the story of a 30 year old supply teacher who defeated a “teenage grime artist” in a rap battle, bringing on-the-hoof poetry to a war of words. Yet the educational establishment weren’t so enthusiastic about his success. Warning, contains poetry. £6 [quick review]

Sun 12 Jan at 4pm in The Black Box Green Room // The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is a “wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy” by “cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Žižek” as he explains how epochal movies reinforce prevailing ideologies. What hidden Catholic teachings lurk at the heart of The Sound of Music? What are the fascist political dimensions of Jaws? And lots, lots more. £4.

Tue 14 Jan at 8pm // Not the Messiah is the one man show by actor George Telfer, “an extraordinary quest for the holy meaning of life of a very naughty boy”, namely the only non-living member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus Graham Chapman.

Wed 15 Jan at 1pm // Lee Ridley aka Lost Voice Guy was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a child. He embraces his disability and uses his iPad to great comic effect as he makes himself heard. The programme says “this guy will leave you speechless”. £6.

Wed 15 Jan at 8pm in The Black Box Green Room // In the Dark is described as “a communal listening experience which celebrates the world’s best radio” with RTE’s acclaimed radio producer Ronan Kelly and “a wealth of BBC and Independent wireless obsessives for a bespoke evening of radio. Admission free, no booking required.

Wed 22 Jan at 1pm and 8pm // Julie Madly Deeply takes songs from Julie Andrews’ musicals (Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady) and intertwines them with stories and anecdotes about the star’s life. A cheeky yet affectionate cabaret performed by Sarah-Louise Young and musical director Michael Roulston. £6 (1pm), £8 (8pm).

Thu 23 Jan at 1pm // Stand-up comic Nat Luurtsema will entertain with her first solo show in three years Here She Be! £6.

Fri 24 Jan at 1pm // The Whinge, The Nordie & The Geek sees three new generation NI comics – Ruaidhrí Ward, Shane Todd and Lorcan McGrane – given seventeen and a half minutes each to cheer up the lunchtime audience. £6.