They're Busting Out! And it's all for a good cause

A FRINGE show whose two stars go topless to perform "breast-based contortions", along with songs, dance and comedy sketches will raise cash for a leading Scottish breast cancer charity, producers said yesterday.

• Emma Powell and Bev Killick have nowhere to hide on stage, where they are topless for over an hour. Picture: Complimentary

Busting Out! has been an Australian festival hit. Billed as a graphic and "raucously entertaining'" show - and an "empowering and affirming celebration of the female body" - it has been brought to Edinburgh by the original producer of the Vagina Monologues.

The early evening show includes performers Emma Powell and Bev Killick doing shadow puppets of the Taj Mahal and camels with their breasts, as well as inviting audience members to join a bra-removal competition. They are topless for much of its 75 minutes.

But while the show breaks taboos, said UK producer Mark Goucher, it is far removed from bawdy Fringe fare, such as Puppetry of the Penis or late-night cabaret acts.

"It is not vulgar, it is not Burlesque. It is really a celebration of women's bodies," he said.

The show is expected to raise thousands of pounds for the Scottish arm of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

There will be nightly collections, along with 50p on every ticket sold going to the research and education charity, which supports a cancer research unit at Edinburgh University.

"We certainly didn't walk into it without asking questions about their approach, and the importance of it being respectful to women," said Audrey Birt, the charity's Scottish director.

The show worked successfully with Australian breast cancer charities and will promote the TLC "touch, look, check" campaign, she said.

"It will be something different for an Edinburgh audience, I suspect, but humour is a good way to challenge some of our thinking."

The standards expected of Fringe shows have changed since the days of the legendary Edinburgh councillor Moira Knox, who for years was relied on to denounce the latest shock production.

Busting Out! is playing at the Assembly Rooms at 6:45pm, and under the new ratings in the Fringe brochure is recommended for age 14 plus.

While it is aimed mostly at a female audience, it has also been billed as a "family show". Both performers are major names on the Australian stage and comedy circuit.

"My biggest concern was the show was frankly going to be vulgar," said Mr Goucher, when he saw it in Australia, where it enjoyed a successful run at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

"However, it is exceptionally liberating for all women of all sizes and all ages."

Shows that shocked

THE 2009 Fringe show Trilogy featured scores of local women dancing nude on stage in a Stockbridge church. The show invited women "to celebrate the very nature of who they are" and opened with readings from The Female Eunuch, by feminist writer Germaine Greer.

The Naked Racist, a bare-all show, won Phil Nicol the festival's top comedy prize in 2006 after he finished nude with a team of volunteers.

The Puppetry of the Penis has toured for a decade since it was first performed at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia. It involves two nude men who bend, twist and fold their penises and scrotums into various shapes.

The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, which came to Edinburgh in the early 1990s, included a performer hanging heavy weights from body piercings in his nipples and genitalia.