First the good news: Cédric Tiberghien, master of tone colour, lucidity and expressive intent, playing the 24 Chopin Preludes plus the Bach C major and the C minor Nocturne in the red-gold dragons' den of the Royal Pavilion's Music Room.

The venom with which Abiodun Oyewole spits “America is a terrorist”, the key repeated line to “Rain of Terror”, has startling power. The piece is an unashamed diatribe against his nation. Beside him his partner Umar Bin Hassan rhythmically hisses the word “terrorist” again and again while, behind, percussionist Donn Babatunde provides minimal backing on a set of three congas. “Take a black woman, a pregnant black woman, cut her belly open and let the foetus fall out, stomp the baby in the ground.”  Oyewole is raging and it feels good.

In his 1991 novel Mao II, Don DeLillo called the literary medium “a democratic shout”. His oft-quoted claim is that any man or woman on the street could strike it lucky, find their voice, and write a great book. Not only does everyone carry round a novel, but those novels are potentially brilliant. Well, it’s not a Pulitzer nomination but in Brighton right now, any ordinary Joe can walk in off the street and find their art put on the wall at the city’s foremost gallery.

I first heard – or rather saw on paper – the work of Lemn Sissay in an English literature lecture hall in the late '90s. As a fresh faced first year uni student, coming firmly from the school of Pablo Neruda, it was quite a departure from my norm.

Sitting between the South Downs and the sea, Brighton’s borders are defined by nature. The Downs’ 2010 designation as a National Park also legislatively limits urban encroachment. The typically beautiful Sussex village of Falmer is on the city’s edge, supporting while doing its best to ignore two universities and a football stadium, with a pond and church at its theoretical heart but an A-road to London gouged through its middle, requiring a bridge between pond and pub.

Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a rock band put together to play an hour of songs created in league with the maverick artist and Festival Guest Director. Putting any expectations aside, it’s a patchy show.

The band – four men, two women – initially arrive on stage one by one, in regulation black cowboy shirts with white piping, lining up, side by side, po-faced, riffing. The guitars are also black-and-white, designed by Shrigley, with varying quantities of strings. They start in what will be their default setting throughout, Krautrock garage rock akin to The Fall. Two of them – keyboard-player Craig Warnock and drummer Ben Townsend – soon return to their own instruments. At the front, singing and performing, are Scottish actress Pauline Knowles and German actor Stephan Kreiss, both deadpan but the latter given to persuasively underplayed clowning.

Shrigley’s sensibilities are naturally to the fore in all the lyrics

The set has no narrative arc or general concept, the word "problem" written large behind them apparently an irrelevance. The songs are akin to musical versions of David Shrigley’s one-frame images, using surrealism, dry observation, mundanity and juxtaposition to create an often humorous effect. At first it doesn’t really work, although the venue is spotted with Brighton’s self-regarding bearderati who guffaw knowingly, keenly hip to every abstruse gag. As dryly smart songs about shoes, dancing and digging holes go by, it initially reminds of film director Wes Anderson’s least likeable work, in that it’s self-consciously kooky but to no particular end other than its own smug smarts.

However, it moves up a gear with a very funny song wherein Kreiss bemoans his mother’s attempt to join the band. It has a great sing-along chorus and is the evening’s most immediate number. Shrigley’s sensibilities are naturally to the fore in all the lyrics, especially in a song that keeps saying “Hey, huge man”. He has a wry way with a line. A ballad, sung by Knowles, is about a guest, possibly after a party, seeking a bed. “Don’t sleep in the entrance hall, there’s a drunk sleeping there, and it’s a fire risk,” she intones.

There are a couple of props brought on to entertaining effect, such as the exhaust pipe used as a didgeridoo (main picture), some projected images and film of Shrigley’s work, and entertaining digs at the Tories and the Queen. Sensibly, for something so lightly conceived, it does not outstay its welcome.

The musicians and actors deliver the whole thing well. They’re tight. But, in the end, possibly due to prep time issues, possibly for other reasons, there’s a sense that Shrigley bit off more than he could chew; that when it came to creating his “alt-rock/pop pantomime” (with moshpit!), he actually dialled it back to something else entirely.

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Overleaf: watch a trailer for Problem in Brighton

They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. His wife, Bella – early muse, sharer of world views and buckets of milk and mother of their daughter Ida, is paid tribute to, for her devotion and dedication to her husband's art.

Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, debate and spoken word, with visual artist David Shrigley as Guest Director.

There is a sense of loyalty from the Brighton audience awaiting Hofesh Shechter’s new work.

This Brighton Festival opener is a perfect fit for day one, coming shortly after the Children's Parade and coasting on the gorgeous, beachy day outside the Brighthelm Centre. I have come from said beach, armed with my own Boy. He's 3. His opinion here is probably more vaild than mine, although he's a little short on the vocabulary.