The Orchard will be home to a variety of oddities and circus acts when a unusual show arrives next week. The Circus of Horrors brings the audience face to face with sword swallowers, voodoo acrobats, pickled people emerging from tiny bottles and vampires flying through the air suspended only by their hair.

Presiding over this amazing amalgamation of oddities is the Undead Ringmaster, Doktor Haze.

He said: "It's an alternative, dare-devil, rock-and-roll circus. It's full of bizarre and unusual things. Every few minutes there is another shock or surprise and that's what makes it unique."

But this is far more than simply a show of the bizarre. The production is full of humour, a strong storyline and live music.

The tale begins in 1900, the last year of Victoria's reign and the age of the freak show. A young girl dares to run away and join the circus but things start to go horribly wrong. She is sucked into a world of lechery and depravity and is eventually sacrificed in a graveyard by skeletons of the backflipping, contorting and flying variety.

But vampires never die and our heroine is reborn 120 years later. She finds herself in the decaying future metropolis of Sin City, home to the legions of undead, monsters and mutants.

Doktor Haze set up the show in 1995. He was born in a circus and says he has sawdust in his veins. Many of the strange performers in the production approached him wanting to become part of the action.

Wasp Boy, for example, is a graduate composer of music who studied at Exeter Music College then decided he wanted to join the circus.

Haze himself left the Big Top to go into rock and roll. But now he is back and combines the two loves of his life music and the circus.

The Circus of Horrors' own musicians, The X Factor, provide a soundtrack of devil-driven rock and roll.

It has a PG certificate so it is up to parents to decide whether they think their children are mature enough to understand it especially some of the humour.

Haze said: "We did think of making it the world's only X-certificate circus but a lot of people have been to see it and said My kids would love this'."

He added: "There is a bit of nudity and a bit of violence, but nothing sexual or bad. It's all done with the tongue firmly in both cheeks. In many ways it is a continuation of the British Carry On-type humour."

The Circus of Horrors is set to be one of the funniest and freakiest nights out you will ever encounter!

Jan 31- Feb 2, The Circus of Horrors, Orchard Theatre, Home Gardens, Dartford, £18/£20, 01322 220000, www.orchardtheatre.co.uk