OL' blue eyes is back! He dropped in to Sunderland Empire on a giant moving screen that blasted him clean out of the past to be centre stage of this innovative musical.

Sinatra died in 1998 after a long illness and here he is ten years later, larger than life on a 20ft tall moving screen accompanied on stage by a live big band orchestra and a troupe of ten fabulous dancers. What a fantastic idea to bring a virtual live concert to the stage for both new and old generations to enjoy.

This is a brand-new type of magic for the theatre, mixing a heap of archive news-footage with rare private family photographs and creating an incredible illusion of reality.

Some of the images have been packed away in the Sinatra family vaults for over half a century and have never been seen before; a significant amount of the material was filmed on 35mm by Sinatra himself. To produce the effects, the footage was laboriously cut out frame by frame, using leadingedge digital technology, then new backdrops are added in a process called rotoscoping'.

A virtual Sinatra tells his own story on screens that fly in from above or from the sides, sometimes with multiple images on multiple screens, along with video projected on to huge balloons and an array of white umbrellas.

There are more than 30 of Sinatra's biggest hits, including That's Life, My Way, I Get a Kick Out of You and, appropriately for the evening, Come Fly With Me.

Director, David Leveaux and choreographer, Stephen Mean have met the challenge of coordinating simultaneous live performance with video imagery and with some very skillful splitsecond timing they've produced an experience that is truly amazing.

It's so easy to get caught up in a type of Sinatramania with the excitement of a fabulous orchestra that I feel as if I've just come back from Hollywood and that I am privileged to have seen a true legend with all the glamour and glitz of a big brassy Broadway musical. I would go and see this again and again.

■ Until Saturday, 8pm (matinee 2.30pm) tickets £21 and £26.

Box office: 0870-602-1130