A PLAY scheduled for the Edinburgh Festival on the recommendation of the British army in Sierra Leone has been cancelled because the British government will not let the actors in the country, media reported on Tuesday. The play, “Kpundeh”, which attempts to predict what will happen when the killing stops in Sierra Leone, so impressed the World Bank after performances at the British Council in Freetown that it paid for it to tour the country. It was to have been the sole African representation at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh later this month, according to The Guardian. However, the troupe of 28 performers have been refused entry on the grounds they might claim political asylum when they arrive, the paper said. It claims the show’s writer and director Inaju Ruben has already lost 3_000 — “a fortune in Sierra Leone” — paying for accommodation. The high commission in Freetown refused to comment on the decision but a Home Office spokeswoman told the paper that officials looked at every case “very carefully before making a decision”. – AFP