Kyle Kinane has been playing the UK for 12 of the 26 years he’s been a stand-up. But you couldn’t say he’s fully acclimatised. The Illinois native, based in Los Angeles, is leery of the Edinburgh Fringe model of a tightly structured narrative hour. And on his latest UK mini-tour, he opens casually with some rascally but half-baked observations derived from being out and about in Manchester, abandoning a routine on tattoos and gently berating himself for not nailing it.
Superficially then, he isn’t slick. But he is wonderfully droll on the disappointments and fuck ups of life, transcending obvious cultural differences. His schlubby and “dumb”, self-recriminating persona only feeds his masterful storytelling. Fretting that he doesn’t have enough time to share all his anecdotes of misadventure, he nevertheless delivers a goofily punchy and often hilarious set. Although it clocks in at about 45 minutes, it feels considerably more substantial and you don’t feel short-changed, supplemented as it is by strong support from Zimbabwean-via-Croydon comic Tadiwa Mahlunge.
Kinane closes the show teasing the R-word. And he confesses that like all straight, white male comics he’s got an opinion on transgender people, a group he finds confusing. However, he’s no reactionary bigot, in the former instance just being honest about his irresponsibility and the limits of his sensitivity. With the trans stuff, he’s more playfully subverting preconceptions about himself as a gruff, beanie cap-wearing 48-year-old, emphasising his naivety as he innocently asks: “Where did you think I was going with that?”
Arguably, he’s having his cake and eating it on both occasions, reaching for a patina of edginess, a frisson of notoriety before gently affirming his liberal credentials. Entirely overriding this though, he projects a take-me-for-the-idiot-I say-I-am sincerity, his rougher edges and manifest faults a huge part of his appeal.
Seguing from some amusingly condescending thoughts on UK knife crime as to why he owns a gun, his reasoning is specious in the extreme and he knows it. He despairs while acknowledging that he’s actively contributing to the escalating cycle of violence, spooked into his ill-advised purchase by Covid-era paranoia and concern about the widespread stupidity that he’s only exacerbating.
He’s an incredulous guide yet very, very funny on the seductiveness of visiting his local LA gun range with his girlfriend, how it reflects upon his masculinity, the laxity of the safety regulations and the sheer insanity of such high-powered weaponry being given to people of dubious mental stability.
With his growling delivery and blue collar appearance of having been kicked around a bit by life, there is something of the whisky-soaked sage to Kinane. But he bristles at Joe Rogan’s assertion that stand-ups are latter-day philosophers, dismayed at the pressure this puts on him to be a thinker, when he’s someone whose impulsiveness, lack of forethought and inability to learn lessons causes him constant harm.
Part of him clearly loves the chaos though. When his girlfriend accidentally posts an explicitly suggestive post to his apartment block’s WhatsApp, he lets the fallout unfold before doubling down on the awkwardness.
When Kinane discloses that he’s recently sober, he quickly suppresses any applause or admiration, acknowledging that he’ll crash off the wagon again soon enough, has replaced alcohol with an even more pitiful addiction and is only belatedly waking up to the notion that being clean doesn’t absolve you of all responsibility.
