Lands of the free?

If you can't afford a ticket to the world, the next best thing is a ticket to the Edinburgh Festival. In a single August afternoon here you can wander from Colombia to Russia, taking pit stops with the Lady-Boys of Bangkok and the Soweto CMdren's Choir. The Edinburgh Festival is internationalism made flesh, the whole world in one fringe. The loudest (and most entertaining) clash happening here is between two nations that gape at each other in mute incomprehension: liberal blue-state America, the Land of the Free, vs conservative red-state America, Land of the Fee.

Liberal Americans have hurried here to scream about the hefty chunk of their country - the Bush base - that believes gay marriage and Kyoto are threats to civilisation but chemical weapons and torture are not. Doug Stanhope is the dishevelled, decadent voice of this free America. He staggers on stage gluggingbeer, saying, "I'm pretty sure funny's at the bottom here, hang on." His routine tumbles out in a drug-haze, his speech centres blown by decades of chemical over-stimulation. "All illegal drugs are medicinal. Boredom is a disease, drugs are the cure," he whimpers. He then begins to talk about a time a gaggle of anti-abortion activists placed a photograph of a foetus under his windshield.

"I guess it's supposed to disgust you into not having an abortion," he drawls. "As if childbirth would look good on a poster. Some mutant coming out of your genitals covered with mucus - yeah, I really wanna see that over dinner."

But Stanhope swiftly noticed that the organisation had left a contact number at the bottom of the flyer, in case you were inspired to join them. "So I called them up and explained that they were the worst kind of child pornographers known to man. Putting pictures of naked children on windshields. Don't you know how many pre-term necrophiliac child molesters are out there? You could have photo- shopped a bikini on and stencilled in a tasteful one-piece, but no. You, sir, are a deviant!"

The show is a cold, bracing bath in Stanhope's hatred of a mutant vision of America as Jesus-Land. He fears this clucking, tutting America is infecting even New York and California's "Google-for- brains" young. "Every older generation hates the younger generation, but it used to be they said the young were getting more and more deviant. 'If we wanted fun, we went to abarn-dance', they'd say. We're the first generation of old people bitching that the young are so tame. Look at these kids - we used to do crack. These pussies just drink Red Bull and go on the patio to smoke. The closest they've come to a fist fight is it a chatroom. 'You looking at my girlfriend? Well I'm going to delete you from my MySpace friends list.'"

Another equally brilliant American stand-up comedian Rich Hall, is also talking about the Grand Canyon running between red and blue America - but instead of doing it in his natural medium, he has written a strange, slightly awkward play. Levelland at the Assembly Rooms presents a uniquely American dystopia: chaos in the Middle East and a string of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast have sent oil prices soaring to $10 a barrel. Cars are rusting in their suburban driveways from sea to shining sea. The lights are going out all over America.

We witness this American meltdown from the studio of Wayman Tisdale, a West Texas shock-jock played by Hall himself. Radio shock- jockery is a distinctively American art-form, a product of the glories of the First Amendment and the paranoid style in American politics. Way-man's callers declare that the US should just "level Crapistan and grab the oil", alternately blaming the Jews and the "yellows" for planning this disaster. Wayman disagrees, arguing that "Opec is a terrorist organisation" - until an armed burglar breaks in declaring that he can divine the presence of fresh stocks of oil by sniffing the air.

The thriller that ensues doesn't really work, since it depends of chunks of flat exposition de livered in agabbled yell. But the play offers a horribly apt symbol for the Bush years - a crucifix doused in oil - and one brilliant joke. Wayman is lamenting the spread of homogenous, amoral corporations across the globe, and asks, "Ever been to the Vatican? There's a McDonald's right opposite. You are sitting in McDonald's enjoying your hamburger and you are forced to stare at this annoying franchise that has been responsible for poverty, genocide and 2,000 years of kiddy-fiddling."

Once you have gorged on American culture, your world tour along the Royal Mile can take you to a hundred other countries, but the American influence is always there. I picked Palestine and Australia as my next destinations, only to end up haunted by Red America. My Name is Rachel Corrie at the Pleasance is the simple, true story of an American girl who travelled to the occupied Palestinian Territories to join the International Solidarity Movement. She stood in front of tanks and bulldozers driving towards the homes of innocent Palestinian civilians, until one day the bulldozer did not stop. An Israeli soldier crushed her to death.