Religion top theme at 60th Edinburgh Fringe

Fring director Paul Gudgin blamed 'The Da Vinci Syndrome' for the rise in religious themed acts. Picture / Reuters

EDINBURGH - The Edinburgh Fringe, the world's largest and most irreverent arts festival, celebrated its 60th birthday on Sunday with religion the big theme being tackled this year by playwrights and comedians.

Fringe performers revel in controversy and 2006 should be no exception with We Don't Know Shi'ite about British ignorance of Islam and Jesus: The Guantanamo Years.

"It is the most amazing barometer of world politics," said The Scotsman's theatre critic Joyce McMillan, reflecting on the Fringe which last year tackled the subject of terrorism head on after the London suicide bombings.

Fringe director Paul Gudgin, overseeing 17,000 performers at the three-week festival of anarchy, said "I find it endlessly fascinating how a thread like this emerges.

"It's either about what is happening with radical Islam or reflects interest and concern over the influence Evangelical Christians seem to be having in the United States," he said.

He also cited what he called "The Da Vinci Syndrome", referring to the film based on Dan Brown's thriller The Da Vinci Code, that was condemned by some Christians for arguing Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had children.

"All of a sudden, these topics are of huge interest. What has surprised me is the breadth of shows on offer."

The Fringe, rumbustious offshoot of the official high arts Edinburgh Festival of classical ballet, music and theatre, also delights in quirky venues.

This year Hamlet is being performed in a bouncy castle, another show offers theatregoers free haircuts on stage and a third is being performed on a double-decker bus.

At a festival that mixes the astounding with the appalling, Fringe director Gudgin urges audiences to be selective, warning that it would take five years, 11 months and 16 days to see all the shows back-to-back.

But he refutes critics who say the Fringe is in danger of bursting at the seams.

"We all become more and more bewildered about what to see - but what a fantastic problem to have," he said.

Gudgin said the Fringe has sold about 20 million tickets over the past six decades "and we hope this year to top the million mark again which we have done for the last three years."

Wading through the Fringe programme is a stamina test in itself, but picking the quirkiest title of the year can be fun.

Leading contenders are Afternoon Tea with a Transvestite and Sit: The History of the Chair but it is difficult to top How To Explain The History of Communism To Mental Patients.

- REUTERS