Sam Morrison. Photograph by Arin Sang-urai
Deputy Opinion Editor
Nora Berman
January 20, 2023
The primary time Sam Morrison tried to do stand-up after his boyfriend’s demise, it didn’t go effectively.
It was simply six to seven months after Morrison, then 27, had misplaced his accomplice of three years to COVID-19. He first tried to course of his loss via comedy, however it was far too quickly.
“The massive factor about doing jokes like that’s that the viewers has to know that you just’re OK,” Morrison advised me, “in order that they’re snug laughing at your expertise. They will sense your discomfort and even your ache.”
Barely a 12 months and a half later, Morrison has succeeded within the extraordinarily Jewish act of urgent his finger deeper into the unhappiness with the intention to mine laughter, and which means, from it.
Earlier than tragedy upended his life, the homosexual Jewish comic from Sarasota, Florida, was already a identified entity on the comedy scene. His 2019 debut on the Edinburgh Fringe Competition, Howdy, Daddy, was a frank exploration of his sexual journey and attraction to older males and bears, a time period that Morrison defines as “a subculture within the homosexual neighborhood of usually bigger, hairier males that exist outdoors of the societal beliefs of magnificence.” In 2020, he ready to do a comedic historical past of homosexual founding fathers (Founding Daddies) however the efficiency was canceled, like the remainder of the world, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
By the point Morrison was considering the 2022 Competition, his circumstances had drastically modified. His beloved accomplice had died of COVID, and he himself had been recognized with Kind 1 diabetes. A present about homosexual 18th-century American political figures all of a sudden didn’t really feel proper.
“It felt actually inauthentic to be going via this grief and enthusiastic about this on a regular basis, after which to not speak about it on stage,” Morrison stated.
And speak about it, he now does.
Sugar Daddy happened as a pure, cathartic extension of his personal means of metabolizing his grief. “What’s trauma however unmonetized content material?” Morrison jokes close to the start of the present, mocking the concept that in our present media panorama that each one struggling is fodder for leisure. Latest best-selling memoirs, like Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mother Died and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, have additionally remodeled profound trauma, abuse and demise into fertile and profitable inventive ventures. McCurdy now has a two-book deal at Random Home following the success of her ebook, and Zauner’s band, Japanese Breakfast, performs stadium arenas.
Cynics would maybe say that McCurdy, Zauner and Morrison have profited off of their trauma. However the actuality is that when one is leveled by grief and ache, there may be the best potential for vibrant new development.
“I used to be bombing rather a lot with grief materials at first,” Morrison stated plainly. “It’s a really troublesome factor to get folks snug laughing at that, and it took a very long time to determine do it. But when you are able to do that, it’s a really ripe topic.”
The theater’s basement bar earlier than curtain name for Morrison’s present felt like a comfortable cocktail hour in a neighborhood homosexual bar. The viewers was overwhelmingly queer, and when Morrison meandered onstage in a teal sleeveless shirt, tight denims and cranberry Doc Martens, the applause was raucously intimate, as in case your pal had simply destroyed a karaoke tune.
Morrison acidly questions our tradition’s discomfort round demise and dying, together with the platitude that “there aren’t any phrases” to say when somebody dies. “Actually?” he says, hip cocked. “There’s no phrases for the factor that occurs to actually everybody on the planet ever?”
Morrison opens the present by welcoming the viewers “to my grief group,” and introduces himself as an “outdated queen” (he’s 28 years outdated). The set was gut-busting and specific. He waxed nostalgic about life earlier than he’d skilled the tragedy of dropping his boyfriend, “being jerked off on the dance flooring and fisting ketamine the way in which God supposed.” He tells the sweetly raunchy story of assembly his deceased boyfriend Jonathan at Provincetown Bear Week throughout a seek for shelter in a hurricane, falling for his stomach laughs and type coronary heart. “He had no psychological diseases!” Morrison laughs, “As a Jew, it was surprising.”
Sugar Daddy takes its title not from the trope of a rich older individual {that a} youthful one dates for his or her wealth (“It’s offensive as a result of Jonathan didn’t have cash!” Morrison insists in the course of the present), however for Morrison’s glucose monitor. As a part of dealing with each the loss and his new analysis, Morrison likes to think about the monitor as his late boyfriend, ever current on his physique, monitoring what he must survive.
His diabetes analysis occurred quickly after his accomplice’s demise, a physiological trauma response to intense grief that I, and Morrison, didn’t know was attainable. “I didn’t count on my pancreas to be like ‘Woman, I gotta go,’” he says, sashaying throughout the stage.
I’ve been to various one-person exhibits the place the artist didn’t have sufficient distance from private materials to make it work on stage. As an alternative of watching creative catharsis, you’re feeling as should you’ve walked into somebody’s remedy session. In Sugar Daddy, Morrison achieves this wanted distance with the rapid-fire jokes, however doesn’t shrink back from slowing down, expressing sorrow or getting mildly choked up on stage. Close to the highest of the present, Morrison assures us that that is the best present he’s ever achieved; he loves Jonathan, and he loves to speak about him. It’s a sensible and transferring approach to assuage our issues about weeping with laughter as, for instance, he describes a deeply awkward Apple Retailer worker making an attempt each to consolation Morrison and to protect images from Jonathan’s pc: “He’s secure with us within the cloud!”
“Once I was going via it, I hated that individual,” Morrison mirrored to me as I advised him the Apple Retailer second was one among my favourite elements. However with time, he discovered the humor in these painful moments. “Demise is a kind of issues that we don’t speak about and are uncomfortable about, and something untouchable is humorous.”
A poignant instance is the a number of grief assist teams he’s in, the place he’s by far the youngest participant. These teams aren’t somber affairs, Morrison explains, however opportune locations for locating sexual companions. “I used to backside, I simply wheelchair now,” he says with a wink.
“I’m in three totally different grief teams as a result of I like competitors,” he pronounces, imitating a girl who remembers her useless husband with a weekly glass of wine in his favourite glass. “‘Oh how good, your little grape juice factor. See, my useless boyfriend is actually in my physique, that’s how a lot I really like him,’” Morrison says, gesturing to his glucose monitor.
Morrison’s final months with Jonathan collectively in the course of the starting of the coronavirus pandemic had been an odd combination of panic and a present. In lockdown at Morrison’s grandmother’s home in Rockland County, they spoke a nonsense gibberish language to one another and watched a house video of Morrison’s bris. When Jonathan finally was admitted to the hospital, a nurse assured Morrison that he’d be tremendous: “‘He’s younger,’ she stated. ‘You hear that babe? Within the ICU, you’re a twink!’”
I requested Morrison if he had noticed any Jewish rituals round demise, together with shiva, when his boyfriend died. He shook his head sadly. “COVID ruined the whole lot. We did a Zoom celebration of life, however that was it, and I’ve at all times needed extra.” He paused, considering. “Perhaps that’s the explanation I did this present, that it by no means felt proper, it by no means felt like we honored him sufficient.”
I’m sure that Morrison has allowed us into the darkest moments of his life, but the sweetest he’s saved for himself and Jonathan.
Sugar Daddy is on the SoHo Playhouse till Feb. 17. Tickets may be bought right here: https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/sugar-daddy
To contact the creator, e-mail [email protected]