Out to Lunch Arts Festival

The Black Box, Dublin Jan 5 1pm/8pm £12/£8 cqaf.com 028-9022403

Getting the New Year started is like trying to drag somebody with a hangover out of a warm bed – roused reluctantly or resentfully, if at all. Perhaps that’s why Belfast’s Out to Lunch Arts Festival, now in its seventh year, offers such stimulating fare in such comforting conditions.

All too aware of three combined challenges – January, recession and turkey-induced coma – this year the boutique festival of performance, music and comedy delivers something between nutritional value and comfort eating: performance times, as the name suggests, are in the early afternoon and evening.

Among the theatre offerings this year are Ross Dungan's monologue play, Minute After Midday, winner of a coveted Fringe First Award at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It entwines voices of tragedy, enmity and compassion in a retelling of the events of the Omagh bombing.

Elsewhere, just missing the deadline for Flann O'Brien's centenary, Stephen Rea narrates The Third Policeman.It would sound like a straight reading for a fascinatingly crooked novel were it not for Colin Reid's live music. Together they conspire to deliver a suite in response to this darkly comic moral fantasia.

If that sounds eclectic, that’s the menu: as much hearty sustenance as pleasing confection.

Can't see that? Catch this

The Little Prince The Lyric, Belfast