Danny Adhim is a gay man of Guyanese descent, and his play GuyOnKnees is about taking stock of one’s life.
In his compelling one-man show GuyOnKnees, the comedic performer Danny Adhim peels off T-shirts one by one. It's a metaphor for his layers of identity issues and the liberating process of self-discovery. Adhim came to Canada as a boy immigrant. In school, teachers taught him to spell his name incorrectly, and when he crayoned a self-portrait in a lifelike brown, he was given a lighter colour instead.
GuyOnKnees is a play on words – Adhim is a gay man of Guyanese descent – and it is a play about taking stock of one's life. Whether speaking about his cocaine addiction or of the misogyny he saw directed at the women who raised him, Adhim is brash, scandalous and vulnerable – a browner version of Scott Thompson's classic Buddy Cole character, but with a poignancy to match the cheekiness.
GuyOnKnees is scheduled to tour nationally this summer and fall, with a local show set for the afternoon of June 25 at the Second City Mainstage. On stage, Adhim is honest and generous; in story, he gives audiences the shirts off his back.
Brad Wheeler