Writer: Sam Morrison
Director: Amrou Al-Kadhi
First seen at the Edinburgh Festival back in 2022, charismatic comedian Sam Morrison channels grief into humour in his slickly put-together and often very funny autobiographical single-hander Sugar Daddy. The performer describes himself as an “anxious, ADHD, asthmatic, gay diabetic Jew” with a penchant for “fat old men”, which hints at a no-holds-barred, self-deprecatory tone. In fact, amid a plethora of wildly off-colour comic diversions, we get a gently reflective piece on love, loss, and the pain of grief.
It is 2019. Morrison finds himself in Provincetown during “bear” week. There is a summer storm on its way, and he only has a hammock for shelter. Seeking to exchange sex for some overnight accommodation, he heads to the local pizza dive, where he encounters PR worker Jonathan, 26 years his senior. The one-night stand is successful, though Morrison is not at all sure about accepting the subsequent invitation to go on a date. “I haven’t even had sex with all of your friends, yet”, he explains by way of hesitation.
Fast forward to March 2020, and the couple find themselves in lockdown at Morrison’s grandmother’s house, more or less unchanged since the 1930s: “a rotary phone on the wall, Jews in the attic”. They handle the tensions of enforced togetherness with long walks on the beach and Zoom acting classes. Forward again to February 2021, Jonathan lies dying in the COVID intensive care ward. Morrison has learnt the end-of-life speech he wants to make to his lover off by heart. “Are you ready?” the nurse asks him. “No, but I’m off book”, he replies.
Morrison develops type 1 diabetes as a physical response to crushing grief. The best joke of the evening comes in a nod to the attraction he holds for older men with large bellies: “My type is type 1, but my ‘type’ is type 2”. Referring to the glucose monitor attached to his arm, he says, “I tell old men it’s Apple Pay”. The performer, sunk in sorrow, reflects and concludes that “The cure to grief is winning a Bafta”, by which he means channelling his bereavement into comedy. Anticipate humorous diversions to, in no particular order, the “dick dock” in Provincetown, a mugging in New York, and the purchase of an urn for Jonathan’s ashes shaped as a sex toy.
Morrison strikes the right balance of light and shade in Sugar Daddy, conveying a sense of vulnerability (and the messy reality of some aspects of his response to loss) that keeps the audience rooting for him. You will laugh at things you do not expect to, which, one imagines, is exactly what this performer intends.
Runs until 4 April 2026
