Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

A three-act love story spanning continents and cultures, Adi Parmar's charming Fringe debut is also his explicit coming out to his Indian parents.

Having moved to Amsterdam in his early 20s, he's a garrulous open book on his long-term relationship with Peter, a much older man too stingy to be a sugar daddy, too directly Dutch to be particularly indulgent of Parmar's sensitivities.

The progressive Netherlands was a 'candy store' for the comic's burgeoning sexuality. His conservative, heteronormative homeland had meant a closeted existence, enabled only by clandestine assignations in public toilets with married men leading similar double lives.

Parmar, or 'Sunny Boy', as the quintessential mother's boy was nicknamed, was the much-prayed-for first boy in his family, the divine and exhaustive sexual process by which his parents were blessed with his arrival sacrilegiously recreated with the help of a burly volunteer from the front row.

Whatever his parents' inklings, Parmar and his sisters were aware of his feminine side. But eschewing the cautionary tale of his drinking, smoking father, he knuckled down to his studies, earning their pride and acquaintances' respect with his grades.

Further education and life away from home naturally followed. And it was here that to his surprise, and with not a little help from gay Hollywood, Parmar began his first relationship in India, albeit completely on the down-low.

Such was the internalised pressure he felt, however, that he reckoned he had 10, 15 years of no-strings homosexuality ahead of him, before, like those men he encountered in toilets, he would have to settle into a sham relationship and start a family.

To truly be himself, he needed to move to the West, splitting from his first love, then wreaking the colonised immigrant's revenge on white, cultural imperialists by letting them fuck him.

Parmar is droll on the power dynamics of sex, not least when straddled across age and race. But he's more interested in vivid storytelling than satire, his witty asides always in service of the narrative.

He and Peter are a bit of an odd couple. But in one important regard they're more conventional than they might initially seem, with a big disclosure from his partner having forced Parmar to re-evaluate who he is.

Compelled into another identity by love, there's some very funny adjustment as he pivots to be more outwardly respectable. Even the easy-going Netherlands has taboos that, without context, he threatens.

The hyper-connectivity of the modern world and artificial intelligence's blithe disrespect for privacy means the comic suspects his parents are already aware of his sexuality. But, like many traditionalists, they're happier in denial.

Still, he's fulfilled their dreams for him, after a fashion. Sunny Boy is a straightforward introduction to a somewhat serpentine life, with Parmar illustrating his tale simply with recourse to photos of his loved ones that he gradually pegs to a washing line.

He displays a strong eye for the absurdity of the tale and the entertainment value of the slight friction in it, even as over and above everything else, the show proves a real heartwarmer.

Review date: 23 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot