Causing trouble again After winning Villain of the Year for his performance as Greg Kelly in Coronation Street, Stephen Billington is again provoking passion, this time in the role of a gay Judas. He talks to BBC News Online's Edinburgh Festival correspondent Matt Grant.
Every festival needs a controversy and Edinburgh has once again come up trumps.
The wrath of right-wing councillors and religious leaders is this year focused on Terrence McNally's controversial account of the life of Jesus Christ, Corpus Christi. The play depicts Christ and his followers as a band of homosexuals. When it premiered in New York, the director and cast received bomb and death threats. Conservative sentiments are still more enraged now it has made its European debut in Edinburgh because it is being performed in a former church. Stephen Billington in character as Judas Iscariot Having caused opprobrium among a nation's housewives by playing Street kidnapper Greg Kelly, he is now taking on the challenge of portraying a gay Judas Iscariot.