'Jihad: the Musical' Hits Edinburgh Festival

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 23, 2007 — -- With songs like "I Wanna Be Like Osama" and "Building a Bomb Today" set to jaunty tunes and a high-kicking chorus line, "Jihad: the Musical" opened this month in Scotland to packed audiences, mixed reviews and inevitable controversy.

The cast from New York premiered the production at the Edinburgh Festival, the largest arts festival in the world. Organizers believe musicals are undergoing a satirical renaissance and among the 2,050 shows being performed this year are musical comedies about Prime Minister Tony Blair, Britain's anti-terror laws, TV evangelism and the Christian nativity story.

None has created as much buzz as "Jihad: the Musical."

Billed as "a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism," it tells the story of Sayid Al Boom, a naive Afghan farmer who is groomed to be a suicide bomber in the West, accompanied by Broadway-style glitzy show numbers.

Along the way, he is seduced by an ambitious terrorist cell leader and an American news reporter, who both try to use him to further their respective careers. It's a satirical comedy with the emphasis firmly placed on the comedy.

The show's producers say that it "invokes the blitz spirit that we must laugh at those who seek to intimidate us."

Coming a month after a failed car bombing on Scotland's biggest airport, the show generated controversy before the curtain first went up. Britain's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper called it a "sick play glorifying terrorism." An online petition posted on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Web site by a member of the public asked him to condemn the show. Showstopper tune "I Wanna Be Like Osama" has so far received more than 140,000 hits on YouTube.

Once the show opened, critics were divided.

"It seldom forgets the tragedy beneath the gaiety, and its wit and musical polish see it through — it does pull off a difficult balancing act," wrote the Daily Telegraph. The Independent thought the script "needle-sharp" and the Evening Standard enjoyed "many funny-clever moments."