Bryony Kimmings is known for letting it all hang out. She has shared her STD with audiences (not literally), and got them to share their pubic hair (literally). Her boyfriend, Tim Grayburn, is shyer. So retiring that for almost a decade he kept his clinical depression a secret everyone. It was only six months into their relationship that Kimmings accidently discovered he was on medication. There is a great, deadpanned, scrupulously honest moment when Kimmings admits she realised not long afterwards that she might be make a show out of the material.

That’s what comes of moving in with a performance artist: you end up exposed on stage. For most of the piece, Grayburn keeps his face covered with a bizarre array of headgear. It’s only towards the end as he confronts his depression, his feelings of shame and a misguided belief – common among men – that having depression makes you less of a man, that he gradually lets us see his face. He’s clearly as nervous as a piglet at a hog roast.

This is a very artfully put together show. Don’t be misled by its bumbling, ditzy qualities. Kimmings knows exactly what she’s doing, and she does it brilliantly in a piece that both celebrates this unconventional love story and sends it up mercilessly, that cleverly entertains even as it reminds that depression, particularly unacknowledged depression, cripples and kills. It’s a sign of the delicate balancing act that the audience divides into smilers and sobbers.

But don’t think that, because it knows what it’s doing and employs skill to do it, the show is fake in any way. It works because the rawness and the pain are offered up with an unadorned candour by a pair who have discovered the art of making us see what too often remains hidden.

• At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.