For a sell-out Saturday show, owner Mark Bennett and fellow house magician Sunil Singh took to the compact red velvet curtain-flanked stage at the Smoke & Mirrors Magic Bar, tucked into Denmark Street opposite the Hippodrome stage door, to present a night of illusion and mind-reading. A rolling roster of local and sometimes national magicians keeps this show fresh and ever evolving . . . For an enjoyable alternative night out in Bristol, Smoke & Mirrors is definitely worth a pot.

The second of Theatre West’s autumn season performances, Shipped, written by Bristol University graduate Eno Mfon and starring Tosin Thompson as feisty teenager Adamma and Sobawale Bamgbose as her Uncle Fred, delves deep into conflicting worlds of political and sexual politics . . . I strongly recommend you to catch this new work from a very talented team while you can.

In this the first play in Theatre West’s new autumn season, playwright Marietta Kirkbride has produced a richly layered observation of a vulnerable individual seeking enrichment and life experience through the internet, and how that goes horribly wrong. It is a fascinating study of how the web can both hide and expose identity – how it can seem like a sensitive intimate one moment, a destructive megaphone to the rest of the world, the next.

As a spectacle, Ghost splutters. Sometimes it hits its target as an all-guns-blazing West-End musical, then seems to want to be something much smaller, more intimate. Perhaps in film the power of close-up would have helped. But its simple message, to remind us of our own mortality, and the power of articulating a message of love to someone we cherish while we have breath to do it, will always have resonance.