Sam Morrison in Sugar Daddy. Photo:James Camaro
Once upon a time — or, you could say, back in the long-ago day — there was a love that dare not speak its name. No more. Oh, no. This is the 21st century, and that formerly reticent love not only speaks its name, it outright shouts, shrieks, squeals and squeaks its name.
A current prime example of the shouting-shrieking- squealing-squeaking aggregate is Florida-born, Brooklyn-based 28-year-old diabetic Jew Sam Morrison, whose 60-minute Sugar Daddy stand-up, run-around, and, often enough, bend-over comedy routine won acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is now in Manhattan for a short run.
Morrison, a lean lad, quickly informs patrons that they are attending a grief group. He’s grieving his recently deceased lover Jonathan, who was 26 years older than he. And it’s important to understand and acknowledge from the outset that no one is in a position to judge anyone else’s form of grief.
So, if Morrison chooses to grieve through humor — and through homosexual humor, at that — he has every right. He runs with it. He races with it. He gallops with it. He stampedes with it. He’s what some folks (prudes?) might consider flagrantly outrageous about it.
From start to finish, he’s unrelentingly graphic. He’s open to describing verbally and physically the sexual delights he pursues as an active gay man. (Older audiences may even listen to Morrison and conclude that AIDS-era restraint is truly a thing of the sorrowful past. Also, anyone who’s seen Harvey Fierstein performing his now virtually tame International Stud one-act will have some idea of what’s transpiring here.)
Indeed, the no-limits comic is so forthcoming about his proclivities that listing even some of them is too much for a family website like this one. His skills at fellatio are the least of his abundant activities. Others, at least one of which he indicates through repeated body movements, will go unnamed but are likely to be familiar to the gay men in his audience. By 2023, though, even hetero attendees know the terms “tops” and “bottoms.” Morrison identifies as a bottom.
What redeems – no “redeems” isn’t appropriate here. What distinguishes Morrison is he’s a genuinely funny guy. He’s bright and informed. He’s clever at shaping his jokes and off-the-cuff comments — and director Ryan Cunningham is clever at taking advantage of the entire stage to exploit Morrison’s unflagging energy.
A strong education peeks through. At one moment the kinetic fellow uses the word “cacophony” and immediately denies knowing what it means. He knows all right, and plenty more.
Whether everything Morrison does is successful as laugh-out-loud risible is an individual matter. While much of the mixed and very enthusiastic crowd was freely guffawing, I only joined in the vocal jollity maybe two or three times. All the same, I was almost always amused by what he had to say and how he said or, um, unabashedly demonstrated it.
Beneath the humor is Morrison’s indisputably profound grief and his choice to grapple with it in this manner. While it may not be his primary goal, he succeeds at broadening the concept of grief — of convincing holdouts that death may be no laughing matter, but finding a way to see it in an alleviating light can be.
As Morrison is concluding Sugar Daddy – “Sugar” in the title referring as much as anything else to his diabetic condition – he indulges in a somewhat moral message about love being what makes the world go round. It’s almost as if he’s justifying the preceding raucous shenanigans. He needn’t, but if that’s his urge, so be it.
Sugar Daddy opened January 19, 2023 at SoHo Playhouse and runs through February 17. Tickets and information: sohoplayhouse.com
