One of the things we love about Fringe theatre is the way that topics and ideas that simply wouldn’t be discussed aren’t just aired out, but can often be celebrated. Take, for example, shunga, the ancient Japanese erotic art produced in the ukiyo-e/woodblock style. Essentially naughty art, but in a 17th-century style.

This established has come under attack in recent years, partially due to Western standards of art invading another culture, sidelining and censoring this peculiar art style, which has deep historic roots in Japanese art history. Shunga Alert is a comedic show about Shunga and its history. Part lecture and part cartoon-clown show, it’s a rare yet fascinating collection of ideas.

We’ve got two teams of performers working together: the excellent Book of Shadowz (who also do Space Hippo) on the projector screen using shadows and puppets, and the excellent clown theatre group GUMBO. It’s a good team up, the silliness of GUMBO works well with the light projections to allow for a cartoony style of story-telling. It feels very much like a radical art style, even though it draws on some very established techniques to get its message across.

Shunga Alert combines projector-based animation and clown comedy to tell a silly tale of censorship. We have three heroes: Mame, Pleasure, and Pain. One is a terrible artist who lacks confidence in themselves, one is an AI girlfriend, and the final member of our team is a pleasure robot who keeps forgetting who they are. Together, they help fight the forces of censorship and promote personal and consensual freedoms.

This is bawdy fun for grown-ups who enjoy a good innuendo, and don’t mind the odd lesson in art history. After all, most of art history is founded in human passion, and this will always be the case no matter how hard we try to rewrite history.

Stand-out weird fun, exactly the sort of thing we come to the fringe to see.

You can book for Edinburgh Fringe shows here, find out more about future shows here.