IT IS the circus of all circuses, but with pizazz. It is the rock ballet of all ballets and then some. It is the show of all shows that leaves you wanting more.

Eclipse, at Blackpool Pleasure Beach's fabulous new venue The Globe, is not just an evening out at the theatre.

It is an experience, an adrenalin-flowing performance that will live on in the memory.

It is the show which eclipses Cats (pun definitely intended) as the biggest thing to hit Blackpool since the Illuminations first put the sparkle on the Golden Mile.

And you don't have to travel to the West End to see this beauty - although London's show business moguls should be even now battering down producer Amanda Thompson's office door, megabucks contracts at the ready.

If that all sounds over the top, just imagine the unimaginable . . . taking the top circus performers in the world, individualists as they inevitably are, and welding them into a cast of super-performing dancers of such quality and timing that the result is almost movie-like in its execution.

Then, when you've dealt with the unimaginable, try on the unbelievable for size and ask yourself: Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, the answer is not Superman zooming through the air - and over the audience -with the greatest of ease; it is aerial artiste extraordinaire Vladimir.

And a more super specimen of man you have never clapped eyes on.

This Russian to rave about has a body that could make a Chippendale look like a burst couch, but it is not the superb physique clad in leather thong that most catches the eye (Ladies you're lying).

It is the cat-like grace with which he moves around the circular stage before take-off which would make half the female population of Britain think the unthinkable after they have come to terms with the unimaginable and the unbelievable.

The other half wouldn't have seen the show!

I swear that, as Vladimir ran gazelle-like around the apron, it was like watching a slow-motion trailer for Chariots of Fire.

When Amanda Thompson phoned me from Las Vegas last November to tell me she had signed up this stupendous new act, I confess I was thinking along the lines of a one-man show

I should have known better. This lady is not a showman's daughter for nothing.

Here, she teams up with that most marvellous of choreographers Antony Johns to produce a futuristic musical drama of such stunning quality that you could be forgiven for thinking Barnum is a lunch-time stroll around the Big Top.

Take three faultless jugglers interchanging in deadpan Chaplinesque unison, the quality voice of former Cats star Ian Meeson from Blackpool, a host of hair-raising stunts on trapeze and trampoline performed in perfect time to musical backing without a safety net in sight and you have a masterpiece that will run and run.

Amanda Thompson is now producing one successful, supercharged rabbit after another out ot the hat.

Can we be looking at the first Blackpool show to continue running out of season? Yes, it's THAT good!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.