Five years ago, The New Vic at Newcastle under Lyme produced a show to beat all others. It was stupendously skilful, hilariously funny, and breathtakingly spectacular. So, what does their Artistic Director Theresa Heskins decide to do? Stage it again, but make it even more amazing!

More than 250 years ago, Philip Astley, a Newcastle-born carpenter’s son, drew a 42-foot diameter circle on some rather marshy ground and filled it with equestrian trick-riders, acrobats and clowns. And so, circus was born.

It wasn’t quite as easy as that, of course, as Frazer Flintham’s narrative script makes abundantly clear. His story weaves its way between a host of jaw-dropping acrobatic acts, very clever clowning and laugh-out-loud theatrical jokes. For example, the ground is so marshy, every actor crossing it punctuates their perfectly serious lines by mouthing squishy, squelchy, footstep sounds that has a full house in absolute stitches. It is pure Goon genius.

The show simply fizzes with cracking ideas and pantomime silliness. You can’t have real horses galloping at speed in a confined space, but you can imagine them; especially if you have the cast all watching them canter by, making the increasing and declining sound of their progress with hand-held fans and fist- thumped benches. So clever!

I was delighted to see the return of Billy The Mind Reading Horse, wonderfully characterised this time by Siu-see Hung, who is so appealingly and mischievously horse-like the audience oohed and aahed.

Michael Hugo’s unbounded versatility is put to marvellous effect as the circus clown Zipper who does everything from playing the white-faced Harry Oatcake, silently miming to a mournful violin, to fooling around with planks of wood like Eric Sykes and sending  up David Attenborough.

But back to the plot, for there is a rather neat one!

Frazer Flintham has done an excellent job of piecing a coherent story together from the incomplete historical information we have, and has employed his fertile imagination when the facts run out.

We follow Philip Astley’s unquenchable desire to be prove himself a ‘gentleman’ and his mission to provide the 18th century public with something new to ogle at. Astley’s astounding idea is to do to circus what Wimbledon did to tennis two centuries later. Put a roof on it. Thus, he can perform all year round by candlelight, in “the most exciting building in the world”.

There are plenty of pit falls (and a host of prat falls) on the way to success. He has a dastardly circus rival Charles Hughes, commensurately played by a smarmily charming Adrian Decosta. His acrobatic ‘piece de resistance’ is to drink a cup of tea whilst standing on his head on a horse’s saddle suspended in mid-air.

The Lord Chamberlain (Michael Hugo again) will only issue one man a licence to perform in London and orders a Houdini-like competition to decide who should get it. Cue the escapology routine!

Nicholas Richardson returns to portray Astley, the world’s first ring master, and is - well - masterful. He has a rough look and a shiny smile and some of the strongest legs imaginable.

Danielle Bird is also back, to plays the sweetheart, Patty Jones, who Astley steals from Hughes. Her ariel routine with Richardson, dangling from suspended red silk sheets, and choreographed by Vicki Dela Amedume MBE is pure, professional circus. It’s an outstanding Act 1 finale that is heart-stopping beautiful.

Did I mention candles? Well, we all know what candles can do to a wooden building and there are records of one of Astley’s amphitheatres burning to the ground. I was waiting for the moment. A lamp is casually knocked over, the decking sparks, and the troop of circus performers mesmerically wield flaming wands in the darkness; a most poetic way to represent Astley’s personal tragedy.

I came away five years ago feeling that the whole show was a culmination of Theresa Heskins’ tenure as Director at the New Vic. This time round it is even better. It is the sum total of all her very best ideas and most memorable shows; all her past excitements combined; every element of entertainment, and more, rolled into one new art form.

Which is, of course, exactly what Philip Astley was doing more than 250 years ago.

Five stars

Reviewed by Chris Eldon Lee at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme where Astley's Astounding Adventures continues to show until Saturday 21 October.