CLAUSTROPHOBICS may not like the sound of Loci theatre company’s site-specific show, taking place in an underground tunnel beneath Chester city centre.

But, for those who aren’t afraid of the dark or enclosed spaces, it promises to be a one-of-a-kind performance.

This is mostly due to its location – the cylindrical shape of the tunnel providing the inside of a London Tube train.

The audience sit or stand within the carriage alongside the play’s two performers, a man and a woman on the last train home stranded when it suddenly lurches to a halt.

“It’s really exciting for us to be able to place the audience in the atmosphere of the performance,” says the show’s director Chris Sudworth. “They get to share the experience of the characters and get some sense of the claustrophobia and darkness they are feeling.”

Mind the Gap, performed by its writer Luke Walker and Louise Morris, was premiered at Manchester’s 24:7 theatre festival in 2007, where it was selected as one of the three best shows and awarded a run at the Octagon in Bolton.

This is the first time it has been shown as a site-specific production, and Sudworth hopes it will lead the way for a UK-wide tour of locations similar to the tunnel.

Previous performances have always been held in traditional theatre spaces, having to rely on artistic lighting to form a believable tunnel-like space.

“It’s about two people who aren’t even aware of each other on the train,” says Sudworth.

“I would call it a dark comedy and it’s quite surreal in parts. It explores issues of communication between the sexes and people’s Woody Allen-style neuroses.

“It looks at the way you might be more willing to open up to people and reveal more of yourself if you’re sitting in the darkness and can’t see their faces than you would in a day-to-day situation.”

Mind the Gap is the second performance from the inaugural Soapbox season, which aims to open up unused spaces around Chester city centre.

The closing event will be the screening of Oscar-winning biopic Man on Wire, in St Olave’s Church, on Thursday, July 23.

The film is a look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City’s World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974.

The location was used to screen 10 feature-length movies during the city’s Screen Deva film festival earlier this year.

MIND the Gap is being performed at the Tunnel, located at the rear of Olio & Farina Deli, on Bridge Street, Chester, on Tuesday, July 7, and Wednesday, July 8. Further details at www.chesterperforms.com