Berlin-based Indian comedian Anshita Koul (she/they) has just arrived in the 20th city of their current tour. That city is Barcelona, and it’s the opening night of the second Barcelona Fringe Festival. It’s also Halloween, a festival which has seen an exponential increase in popularity in the city in recent years—a significant factor, undoubtedly, in the size of the audience tonight. There are a couple more stones in the show’s path: imperfect lighting and sound, a pager announcing a food order at a poignant moment; but Anshita is a pro, and this is a Fringe, after all.
Where Is Your Husband? is Anshita’s first storytelling solo show in English, and it has just won them the SoHo Playhouse Award at the Thessaloniki Fringe Festival, meaning a trip to New York early in 2026 to perform the show in an Off-Broadway run.
The show takes in many serious topics, from political displacement, intergenerational trauma and CPTSD, to identity, cultural pressures, and deep loss. Anshita performs “from the scar, not the wound,” which enables them to balance out the weighty subject matter with genuine warmth and humour, artfully building the story and delivering it as if to a group of new friends. It’s a small crowd in a large, bright space, and it’s clearly more challenging to create the intimacy and connection the story demands than it would be in a cosier room, but Anshita makes the best of it.
The show is a little lighter on jokes than I expected, and is gently amusing throughout rather than eliciting audible laughs from this particular audience, but this doesn’t take away from their engagement in the story.
There is, in fact, so much crammed into this hour that it occasionally feels as if the pacing is a little off; there are some periods or events that seem to be skated over, that we might want to hear more about. That, really, is testament to the depth and magnitude of Anshita’s story, and to how many pivotal moments lead to its climax. It must have been a monumental task, whittling it down this far.
Overall, this is a unique, moving, and deeply personal story, told by an extremely open and likeable performer. It will make you want to give them an enormous hug (which they will gladly accept) and learn so much more about them, over a nice cup of chai.
