Mind Wanderings and Various Other Bull

By Paul Majendie

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Bouncy Castle Hamlet, Macbeth with a Sinatra soundtrack, Shakespeare for Breakfast with free coffee and croissants.

The Edinburgh Fringe richly deserves its reputation for artistic anarchy and every year The Bard is the target of bizarre adaptations at the world's largest arts festival.

"It is amazing how robust he is. I have seen it survive some awful treatments and still come out as a damn good story," said Fringe Director Paul Gudgin.

"It is extraordinary how Shakespeare gets singled out. Why don't we get Charles Dickens' Great Expectations at the OK Corral?"

Pressed to pick his all-time favorite production he went for "A Midsummer Night's disco -- Shakespeare on roller skates."

As The Fringe celebrates its 60th birthday, the prize for zaniest 2006 production goes to Hamlet set in a bouncy castle.

To see the Prince of Denmark in laddered tights bounding around declaiming "To Be or Not To Be" is a truly surreal experience.

Surely this would have Shakespeare turning in his grave on the 400th anniversary of his death?

Not at all says the play's director William Seaward. "I think Shakespeare had a sense of humor. He might not have approved, but I think we could have talked him round."

EUREKA MOMENT

Seward had his eureka moment when attending a children's birthday party in Argentina. "I saw the children playing on a bouncy castle and that is when the idea came to me.

"It was insanely difficult finding actors. We kept all our mistakes in as everyone finds them hilarious."

At the other end of the professional spectrum, actor Bruce Morrison pulls off an elegant tour de force with his one-man show "Shakespeare's Passions," recreating famous speeches with just a basket full of props.

"Anything goes -- that is the joy of the Fringe," he said. "We had two Japanese couples in here smooching in my Romeo and Juliet speech. In this century, Shakespeare is still excruciatingly exciting for so many people."

The Fringe offers an endless variety that could be collectively labeled "101 Ways to Murder The Bard."

"Macbeth -- That Old Black Magic" boasts a Frank Sinatra soundtrack and you can see "The Tempest" with acrobats, puppets and circus tricks.

In "Corleone: The Godfather," the American High School Theater Festival troupe asks "What if Shakespeare had written the Godfather?"

Theater critics may suffer but Joyce McMillan of The Scotsman cheerfully accepts the challenge.

"It is very hit and miss but, with colors flying, The Bard survives at The Fringe and some people who have been traumatized at school do like to see him being taken down a peg."

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