Chainsaw-toting cross-dresser to headline at Dublin Fringe Festival

TG4 PRESENTER Manchan Magan is to take to the stage wearing a dress and brandishing a chainsaw as one of the headliners of this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival.

The festival, now in its 15th year, runs from September 5th to 20th in 50 theatres and outdoor venues across the city, as well as a few more unusual locations including a supermarket and a hospital.

Magan wrote and will star in the bilingual play, Broken Croí, Heart Briste, as a disillusioned Irish language fanatic seeking revenge for the death of Gaeilge.

Among the other 102 shows is The Blanch, where the Blanchardstown shopping centre is the focus of a music, comedy and theatre performance that celebrates the contemporary shopping experience; Loose Canon's Piggyback Project,where theatre directors share designers, cast, space and time, one piggybacking on the other; a performance in St Brendan's Hospital called Nurse Me; and a show called Power Point,described as Dangerous Liaisonsmeets The Apprentice, at the Camden Court Hotel.

The every-popular Spiegeltent is having its final Fringe outing this year and will host a variety of cabaret and dance acts. Its highlights include La Clique, the burlesque/ circus/vaudeville show that has sold out at the festival for three consecutive years.

The Spiegeltent will also host a number of music acts including American composer Nico Muhly, who has worked with Antony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright and Bjork, and scored several films including the Oscar-winning The Reader, starring Kate Winslet.

Also playing in the tent is 2008 Meteor Award nominee Camille O’Sullivan, who performs songs by Nick Cave, Jacques Brel and Tom Waits; and Synth Eastwood, a music, art and technology group.

Dance performances include Where Did It All Go Rightby Ponydance, described as "four people in a bar, trying to get out of it"; Legitimate Bodiesby Arno Schuitemaker, which explores the relationship between violence and entertainment; and On The Wallby Croí Glan, which looks at the disparity between how we view ourselves, and how we are viewed by others through a cocktail of identity, sexuality and politics.

Visual arts include Eupraxia, a sculptural exhibition of cardboard, wax, papier-maché, MDF, tinfoil and discarded packaging by Sam Keogh and Joseph Noonan Ganley; and Absolut Original, where 16 artists offer their interpretation of a bottle of Absolut Vodka, the company that is this year's sponsor of the Fringe.

Full details of acts, venues and booking are available on www.fringefest.com