Edinburgh's Fringe

The Stage reports that the programme for this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe (3-25 August) has been announced. There is the usual mixture of plays, comedy, and musical events. Theatrical highlights, include:

Comedian Michael Barrymore is to make his Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre debut this summer when he stars in a new play about Spike Milligan.

Surviving Spike by Richard Harris, which will be produced by Bill Kenwright and run at the Assembly Rooms, is one of the highlights of this year's fringe 2008 programme, unveiled today.

Meanwhile, two plays at the fringe this year will address massacres in US schools.

The Boy from Centreville, staged at the Pleasance Courtyard, is a piece of verbatim theatre concerning last year's events at Virginia Tech University, while Columbinus bills itself as a "sensitive docudrama" about the Columbine High School massacre.

Welsh theatre company Sherman Cymru will bring Deep Cut to the Traverse Theatre, a play about the soldier who died from gunshot wounds while training at Deepcut Barracks.

The Traverse will also host Pornography - the latest play from Simon Stephens, which "captures Britain as it crashes from the euphoria and promise of the 2012 Olympics announcement into the devastation of 7/7."