France’s world-renowned Avignon Festival is having a bad year, with critics calling it “purgatory” or worse, and patrons walking out of performances in droves. “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.” One critic described this year’s festival as the worst in 37 years, and another wrote, “You think you’ve reached the last point in mediocrity, pretentiousness and confusion. But no. There is always something worse.”