Critics savage Avignon festival

The festival is regarded as the second-most important in Europe

France's Avignon arts festival has been savaged by critics, as theatregoers walk out of shows accused of contempt for mainstream audiences.

"What purgatory!" said the magazine Le Point in its arts section, while Le Monde attacked the festival for its "unfathomable tedium".

The conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro dubbed it "the festival's worst crisis since 1968".

One of the festival's organisers said he had no regrets about the event.

'Artistic disaster'

"It is chic, it is hip, it is conceptual. And it is totally cut off from the real country," Le Figaro said, after criticising a line-up it accused of being a "tiny in-crowd, drunk on its own pathetic audacity".

"Does the festival have the right to survive this artistic and moral disaster?" it said.

The festival, which was founded in 1947, is regarded as the second most important in Europe after August's Edinburgh Festival.

On Tuesday, audience members shouted abuse at a dance installation by choreographer Christain Rizzo which was accompanied by electronic noise.

One newspaper dubbed the festival the worst since 1968

On Sunday, much of the audience at Pascal Rambert's After/before walked out.

The piece's first 40 minutes consist of a film showing people answering a question, followed by live actors repeating their lines and then repeating them again in a song and dance routine.

Another piece, a two-parter called A Lovely Blonde Child and I Apologise, saw actors drape life-size dolls of young girls over coffins in suggestive poses. It was accused of inciting paedophilia.

"You think you've reached the last point in mediocrity, pretentiousness and confusion. But no. There is always something worse," said Le Figaro's drama critic.

The festival was crippled in 2003 after a strike by theatre workers, but returned with healthy audiences last year. ticket sales for this year's events had been strong.

Administrators Hortense Archambault, 35, and Vincent Baudriller, 37, have been accused of concentrating too much on non-dramatic performance art.

But in an interview with Le Monde, Mr Baudriller said he had no regrets with the 2005 programme.