“They're calling me the Gok Wan of burlesque,” says Stella Starr, who has deliberately created a show with women of all shapes and sizes.

“It’s very much fighting against the homogenising of women’s image – but it’s also a big, over-the-top production that’s been designed to beat the recession blues.”

With so many burlesque shows and acts in Brighton, Stella’s Vavavavoom company is venturing into ever more dance theatrie territory with Femme Fatales, which takes the idea of women through the ages as its theme.

“It starts with Eve in the Garden of Eden, and goes right through to modern times. There’s also a Hindu goddess, which is a Bollywood pastiche, and a pin-up girl on a heart-shaped bed being seduced over the phone.

“It’s quirky and surreal, and a visual feast.”

With dance, mime,video projection and a specially-commissioned soundtrack, the show will soon move to London and the Edinburgh Festival, but this one-night only performance in Brighton will be its world premiere.

Part of the show was debuted at a sell-out performance at the Spiegeltent in 2005, but since then it has been extended to take on “Cecil B De Mille proportions”, with more than 20 performers bringing each of the vignettes to life.

“We want to show women as a series of big, colourful archetypes, as goddesses, vamps and femmes fatales,” Stella says.

  • Doors 7.15pm. Tickets £12.50 (£10 concessions) on 01273 736222.