C-90, Argus Lofts, Brighton, until May 20

6:00am Tuesday 8th May 2007

Where have all the mix tapes gone, long time passing?

It's a question that would characteristically bug the whimsical, quirky and pleasingly pedantic Daniel Kitson, a comedian whose material has always combined the bitter and the sweet.

But it would have remained unanswered had the Perrier Award-winning stand-up not begun to diversify from the conventional gig format in favour of telling tales.

With 2003's A Made Up Story and 2005's Stories For The Wobbly Hearted, Kitson reacted against his reputation for talking honestly about his own life by going on stage and making stuff up. Premiered at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, where it won a Fringe First award, C-90 is his third storytelling show. It is his first to be staged as a piece of theatre, however, and for the Brighton Festival the staging has undergone an exciting transformation.

Rather like an Alan Bennett monologue told in the third person, C-90 is the story of one Henry Leonard Bodey, who has worked for 20 years in an isolated vault, recording and storing all those unwanted and undelivered mix tapes with which the pre-iPod generation furnished their friends and lovers. Today is Henry's last day and, after receiving an anonymous package containing a cassette player, he starts, at last, to listen.

"He wanted a space that felt as though it had been completely abandoned and forgotten for a number of years," says Matt Jones, a freelance, Brighton-based arts producer who worked with Kitson on reconceiving the piece for the Festival.

"Last year I spent a day taking him round a bunch of unconventional Brighton spaces like the Friend's Meeting House and that old Eighties ballroom at the King Alfred leisure centre. We looked at least a dozen different sites, and The Basement was the last place we went to. Daniel just turned to me and said, This is it'."

Formerly known as the Fringe Basement, the Kensington Street venue is situated under the Argus Lofts building and currently undergoing redevelopment - the builders are downing tools for the run.

"C-90 has pretty much always played in conventional performance spaces," says Jones. "The original set was a four metre high wall of cassettes and a few bits of furniture. Here the audience will walk down that rather out of the way flight of metal stairs not really knowing what to expect."

We won't spoil it for you by saying too much, expect that the set is "cocoon like" and an "eccentric and somewhat higgledy piggledy jumble of influences". The audience, just 100 for each show, will sit on a carpet with Kitson performing in amongst them.

"He seems to enjoy himself most when he can really connect with the audience," comments Jones.

"It's a great piece of theatre to begin with but I think it'll be even more special to actually be inside Henry'sworld."

• 8pm, SOLD OUT, 01273 790709
• For review, see Thursday's The Argus or visit www.theargus.co.uk/festival
• Daniel Kitson will be performing a stand-up set at the Marlborough Theatre as part of the Fringe Festival. Call 01273 709709.

Editor's Choice