Comedian Sam Morrison’s new solo show Sugar Daddy is about his dealing with the grief of losing his partner.
Shortly after launching into his solo show Sugar Daddy, Sam Morrison talks about being mugged. The thief, armed with a gun, demanded his cell phone, and Morrison resisted because it had pictures of his late lover Jonathan on it. “I know we just met,” Morrison tells his audience, “but I think we can all agree that was off-brand.” (It’s clear from the audience’s ebullience that they know perfectly well what his brand is. The mostly young crowd in fleeces and pullovers and trainers have been boisterously waiting for him, even drowning out the pre-show music.) “I’m an anxious, asthmatic, gay, diabetic Jew,” explains the comedian. “We’re not known to excel in moments of crisis.”
In a show that is by turns poignant, vulgar and quite funny, Morrison touches on a variety of subjects, but the mainstay of it is his three-year love affair with Jonathan, an older man whom he met on a debauched outing to Provincetown, Mass. Sleeping in a hammock with a hurricane about to arrive, Morrison knew he needed to find shelter, so he picked up Jonathan in a fast-food joint. It’s a bawdy meet-cute scenario, but it comes off as charming more than mercenary. (Of course, it’s both.) Miraculously for Morrison, that wee-hours pickup turned into a permanent relationship.
Morrison’s millennial attitudes spark a wide range of reminiscences and observations. Photographs by John Cafaro.
“I didn’t know people could be this happy in our three years together,” he says. “I mean, he just had, like, no mental illnesses? As a millennial comedian, I didn’t know that was an option.”
And Morrison then expounds on his sexual preferences: he’s attracted to “bears”—gay older men who are often bearded and always large-bellied—and not skinny men or workout fanatics. Friends try to fix him up with a partner, often misinterpreting this crucial information. “I want a bear!” he exclaims. “You seen The Revenant?—I have a type.” (The joke lands well, even though the 2015 film is no longer in the zeitgeist.)
“You know, people think it’s weird I’m into thighs and bellies,” he continues in his disparagement of leanness over flab. “I think it’s weird you’re into tibias and fibulas. No, give me a belly, I want a belly. … Every time I see a muscly guy I want to go up to them and be, like, ‘I don’t need you to carry water from the well—can you sit on a suitcase to close it?’”
Still, the nature of Morrison’s material is often serious, as in his discussion of his diabetes. On his arm he wears a glucose monitor (there’s one on his hip as well), and during the show it went off, which occasioned an apology-cum-excuse as he went backstage and returned with the paraphernalia to check his health status. “It reads my blood sugar on my phone,” Morrison explained, “but I love to tell dumb people it just showed up after the booster shot.”
Amid the tangents and health issues and occasionally scabrous descriptions of sexual hijinks, Morrison’s show is a warm one about finding the right person, and about dealing with grief. His opening words, delivered over a microphone before the lights go up, are “Welcome to my grief counseling.” He attends a “gay widow support group” to share his feelings. “The way that some of these widows are able to talk about their late partners is very abrasive, but it’s very cathartic,” says Morrison. “It can kinda slap death in the face, if you know what I mean.”
The group he belongs to consists of “about fifty 70- to 95-year-old elderly Jewish gay men,” says Morrison, “and I’ve never had more sex in my life. I’m like a gay club ‘7,’ but a widow support group ‘12.’”
Morrison’s casual delivery (the director is Ryan Cunningham) could be smoother—there’s a lot of anacoluthon and abrupt free association, and occasionally stammering that frays the edges of his well-considered material. Sometimes Morrison’s voice drops pretty low, especially in moments of emotional intensity. It’s a deeply affecting show for him to perform, of course, but the audience shouldn’t have to strain to hear. At times his flights of fancy—there’s one about the whiteness of clouds and the race of guardian angels—seem like filler, but other fanciful moments fit more comfortably into the whole, with canny references from Abraham Lincoln to Bowen Yang.
In any case, Morrison provides much to think about, much to empathize with, and a generous supply of laughter for his audience, whether gay or straight.
The Soho Playhouse production of Sugar Daddy runs through April 1 and plays at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. For tickets and more information, visit sohoplayhouse.com.
