At the end of his hour and 20 minute long performance Shlomo gives us an encore, a percussive tune wherein his amazing noise-making abilities are piled on top of each other with a piece of sampling kit called a Loop Station. This multi-layered nugget is propulsive but the seated audience is unsure, as it has been throughout, whether the evening's ambience should be rowdily interactive or quietly appreciative, as if watching a play. Except, that is, for two women who stand up and boogie enthusiastically.

Tickets are now on sale for the Brighton Comedy Festival (4-20 October), which takes place in several venues in the South Coast town.

When Brighton hip-hop boys Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule first came on-radar in 2011 with the summer smash “Down With the Trumpets” they appeared to be a good-time flash-in-the-pan, possibly even a nascent boy band. When Fatboy Slim got involved, producing the infectious “Mama Do the Hump”, sneaking his old big beat sound back onto daytime radio, it pricked the interest, but it was in the live arena that Rizzle Kicks proved themselves. They went on the road with a full band, replete with a top-range brass section, and slayed the festival circuit.

The absolute loyalty of a little boy to his under-deserving friend is what swells The Kite Runner’s heart and fuels its tragedy. So you can’t really blame Matthew Spangler’s stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller for sticking faithfully to the novel’s melodramatic side. But Giles Croft’s production, a joint venture between Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman that’s playing in between as part of the Brighton Festival, hasn’t quite found a way to balance narrative drive and emotional punch.

Mariele Neudecker is the lead artist of this year’s HOUSE, a festival for the visual arts which is now in its sixth year and which runs parallel with the Brighton Festival. She's a fitting choice: an immersive exhibition in a beautiful wreck of a Regency house by the sea complements her long-held fascination with the watery sublime.

Magicians’ online forums are seething at Bullet Catch’s host and writer-director, the Scottish actor and magician Rob Drummond. This is because at one point in the show he levitates a small table then takes an audience poll as to who would like to know how the trick is done. When a majority vote they’d like to know, he shows us, simple as that.

Knee Deep, the show by four-person Brisbane acrobatic troupe Casus, is only an hour long but packs more eye-popping antics into its first 10 minutes than many circuses muster in three hours. Their fluid, almost faultless displays of gymnastic skill have a theatrical dynamic that’s so gripping I feel I’ve missed something vital every time I look down for a few seconds to scribble a note on what's occurring. They really are something special.

Aware I was going to see a stand-up comedian at the Brighton Festival but not knowing much about Daniel Kitson, the opening of his new show, After The Beginning, Before The End, bemused. On he wandered, shaven bald of head, geeky, bearded, wearing specs and a librarian-style brown jacket. He sat in a nondescript red chair at a small table with a cup of tea and pressed buttons on an electronic gizmo which began to burble sweet abstract electro bleeps. Then he went into a monologue which ceased an hour and 40 minutes later.

If this native New Yorker were in a relationship with the city of London, our Facebook status would read: “It’s complicated.” We’ve been through hell together. London is one of my favourite cities. I blissfully cross the pond several times a year to teach and to see my mates. But, this fabulous city also bestowed on me the worst reviews I’ve ever gotten in my life. So, why the heck am I coming back to do yet a show about the very show that shattered my dreams? Insane!

With BBC Four currently mourning the passing of the LP, it’s encouraging that some artists still like to confine themselves to the format’s time limitations and its implicit requirement that the songs etched into its silky surface should be connected by some kind of theme or mood.