Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Kinder / Shunga Alert / Clean Your Plate!

Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★★★ 

Drag artist Goody Prostate (yes, I know) receives a call from a local library. Garbed in lederhosen and sporting a preposterous German accent, she was expecting a brutal, no-prisoners-taking drag roast battle. Instead, she finds that she’s actually been booked to read to a bunch of kids.

Okay, the starting point for Melbourne-based actor/writer Ryan Stewart’s solo show might not be the Fringe’s most convincing, but it nonetheless offers up plenty of opportunities for a dissection of current moral panics, and of the rights and wrongs of introducing children to a world beyond heterosexual ‘normality’. Stewart does indeed begin there, but quickly veers away, leaving those issues quickly box-ticked but hardly explored in much depth. It’s disappointing, but what Stewart moves on to proves just as compelling: a more elusive, wider-ranging questioning of identity and memory, of vulnerabilities, and of – quite literally – the practicalities of drag, from donning elaborate costumes to the apparently endless succession of accessories.

Stewart is a fluent, captivating performer, and delivers a clutch of lip-sync numbers with winning conviction and swaggering self-assurance. But perhaps a stronger focus for its somewhat scattergun themes might have made Kinder a stronger show with a clearer message.

• Until 24 August

Shunga Alert, Underbelly, Cowgate ★★★

Shunga, for anyone not already clued-up on Japanese culture, is erotic visual art, created by some of the country’s greatest and most renowned painters alongside their more conventional works, and constituting a rich and treasured repository of sometimes deeply strange, even disturbing images. There’s straight stuff, gay stuff, stuff that mixes the two, and hey – how about a few octopus-human unions? (If that sounds unlikely, just check out The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife by Hokusai, he of the ubiquitous Great Wave Off Kanagawa.)

I might sound like an expert. You could be, too, after spending an hour with Shunga Alert from the joint forces of two companies – Osaka-based Gumbo and Canadian-Japanese duo Book of Shadowz – which provides a gentle introduction to this (ahem) unusual art form, as well as taking us on a (literal) and somewhat clownish journey into some of the genre’s most iconic images, using live video, shadow puppetry, over-the-top clowning and more (pictured above, image by Robin Mair).

To say the least, it’s an eye-opening show, and one that definitely raises more questions than it answers. Anyone looking for historical context and cultural importance – well, you won’t find much of either of those here, despite puppeteer/narrator Daniel Wishes’ droll commentary. But there’s not much gleeful, pearl-clutching shock at the sometimes extreme images either. And in any case, the performers’ warning cries of the show’s title serve to alert those of a sensitive disposition to an incoming visual salvo.

Shunga Alert is in some ways a frustrating experience: it raises a fascinating subject, only to treat it in quite a silly, superficial, pantomime-like way. But maybe I’m showing my age: it’s a lot of fun too, and provides some startling insights into a little-known corner of Japanese culture, even if it doesn’t do much to explain them.

• Until 24 August

Clean Your Plate!, C aurora ★★★

What could be more French than a show about an obsession with food? Possibly quite a few things, to be honest, but Aurélien Boyer’s debut Fringe show is nonetheless a likeable if slightly ramshackle mix of comedy, impersonation, video and movement, all focused around what his character Augustin likes to eat, and why he likes to eat it. Like, for example, why he’ll throw a friend out of his flat at his 30th birthday party because of a philistine attitude towards authentic Provençal ratatouille. Or why he seems to be fighting a losing battle in choosing local, responsibly grown vegetables from small producers. Or why he won’t eat tomatoes. Or – to explain the show’s title – why his parents’ insistence that he should finish what was on his plate led to a lifetime of worry and concern about food.

In truth, Boyer probably bites off more than he can chew (so to speak) in terms of themes and ideas, so that none of them are explored in a great deal of depth. But it’s fruitful, nonetheless, to see the connections he draws between farming, advertising, food snobbery and body image – to name just a few of the many subjects he covers as he throws his net wide across the whole food sector and beyond. He’s an engaging performer with a smooth way of sliding from focus to focus, and Clean Your Plate! is nothing if not ambitious in its live and video elements. But by the end of his eclectic hour, you may have unexpected insights into the dish that Boyer been cooking on stage throughout the show – stick around, and you might even get to sample it.

• Until 24 August

• The Edinburgh Fringe runs until 25 August 
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