SINGAPORE — Sure, you already know it’s going to be politically incorrect. With a title like that and a programme note that namedrops Borat, you steel yourself for a bit of squirming. But it doesn’t quite prepare you for the actual experience.

This collaboration between Swiss/German theatre bad boys Peng! Palast and Israel’s Machol Shalem Dance House for the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival gleefully pummels you with generous servings of insensitivity at a whole bunch of levels.

In this part-Tarantino-esque making-of video documentary, part-circus act gone haywire, a bunch of brash, hard-drinking actors fly to Tel Aviv to collaborate with a dance company in dealing with certain skeletons in the closet called the Holocaust.

It doesn’t take long for political correctness to fly out of the window—early jokes about going into “enemy” territory and mock Nazi salutes signal the start of a two-hour session of laughter and groaning. No one and nothing is safe as the onslaught of asides and jokes captured on camera or uttered and enacted onstage. You’ve got racial stereotypes (including ones close to home), gender jibes, sexual putdowns, and, yes, they even drag in a paraplegic in a wheelchair (which they later “borrow”, leaving the man lying on the floor as they continue performing).

And yet, for all of Circus’ full-on goading to get you emotionally worked up — whether it’s a sense of outrage, unease or plain embarrassment — there’s something quite brilliant about what it’s trying to discuss.

Yes, the idea of prejudices — and in particular, the touchy subject of Nazi Germany’s atrocities towards Jews — is the most obvious. The tensions between Germany and Israel are fleshed out as two groups using art creation (and a sidetrip to the Holocaust Museum) as a kind of clearing-the-air therapy session, with the story of two of the performers’ grandfathers as a “peg”—one of which happens to be Nazi biggie Karl-Otto Koch.

But the positions are not black and white—if the Peng! Palast boys come across as ignorant brats with no sense of historical awareness or propriety, their Machol Shalem counterparts are not let off the hook so easily as well. When a Swiss actor insists that they bring in the issue of Palestine into the equation, the Israeli insists there’s no connection between that and what happened to the Jews in World War II. When the Israeli choreographer gets frustrated with his visiting collaborators’ efforts at dancing, he retorts that they’re doing high art and not like “a bunch of negroes coming down from trees.” Ouch, indeed. And finally, throughout the rehearsals, the same choreographer wants them to imbibe guilt and to bring out that “German anger”, which confuses the apathetic Germans. There’s biting irony here in that to create some sort of catharsis or resolution between the two “sides”, age-old stereotypes are being dug up.

But other things are also going on here, as Circus head-butts other binaries. This grand topic of History is woven into the personal via the Peng! Palast boys’ friendship that come under fire after a shock accident. There is, also, explorations of the dialogue between theatre and dance, film and live performance, performer and audience (as a couple of audience members take part in the show’s latter bouts of silliness), and finally, reality and fiction.

Which is which? How are things reconciled? Under The Holycoaster S(Hit) Circus’ twisted tent, you’re face-to-face with some very, interesting questions.

The Holycoaster S(Hit) Circus’s final show on Jan 19 is sold out. For more information on the festival, visit www.singaporefringe.com.