Simon Callow gets in touch with his feminine side at Fringe

ONE of Britain's top stage and screen actors is to get top billing at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe - appearing in drag.

Simon Callow, star of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and Howard's End, will have the lead role in a new adaptation of the hit French play Le Mardi Monoprix.

Callow, who won rave reviews playing William Shakespeare at last year's Fringe, will play a "loving daughter, carer and transvestite" in Tuesday at Tesco's, which is being staged as part of the Assembly programme this August.

The actor wowed audiences in Edinburgh two years ago in the touring production of Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. He will join the likes of magician Paul Daniels, shows about musicians Billie Holiday and Liberace and comedian Tommy Cooper in this year's Assembly programme.

Callow's involvement in this year's Fringe has been confirmed just months after he tried to rally support for the campaign to prevent the long-running Assembly Rooms venue on George Street being lost to the festival this year to make way for a revamp. He will be appearing at the Assembly Hall on the Mound.

A spokeswoman for Assembly said: "Simon Callow is a national treasure and one of Britain's greatest actors with an incredible career that spans Four Weddings and Amadeus to innumerable stage incarnations, most recently with Dr Marigold and Mr Chops and Shakespeare - The Man."

Assembly artistic director William Burdett-Coutts said: "High-quality theatre has always been at the heart of Assembly's programme and 2011 raises the bar even further. We are delighted to welcome back Simon Callow performing a beautiful new play."

Assembly's programme also features award-winning Scottish actress Gerda Stevenson, who will be appearing in her own play, Federer Versus Murray, with Dave Anderson.

Casualty and Holby City star Clive Mantle will play Tommy Cooper. Bobby Crush - the veteran pianist who shot to fame on Opportunity Knocks in the 1970s and famously wrote I Wish I Could Fly for TV ventriloquist Keith Harris - will bring his show dedicated to Liberace to Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, following its box office success with the Chippendales two years ago, the Gilded Balloon's programme will feature an adults-only cabaret show from Brisbane, Briefs, which is said to combine burlesque with circus skills.

It emerged last week that pop singer Marc Almond would be making his Fringe debut this year, at the Traverse Theatre, while the same venue's programme will also include The Monster In The Hall, Scots playwright David Greig's latest work.

Underbelly's line-up includes American stand-up comic and impressionist Michael Winslow, star of Police Academy, and US chat show host Tom Green, both making their Fringe debuts.