Six years ago, a chance meeting on Commercial Street changed the world of comedian Sam Morrison. The encounter marked the start of a relationship that Morrison recounts in his one-man show Sugar Daddy, a story of love and loss that may get a Broadway run after a successful off-Broadway production. He is back in town this week to talk about how he created that show.
The night he met Jonathan on Commercial Street, Morrison was in his mid-20s and had just done a stand-up set during a stormy Spooky Bear weekend. Jonathan, more than 20 years older, would become Morrison’s partner. The two sheltered together during the pandemic — until Jonathan died of Covid-19 in 2021.
In Sugar Daddy, Morrison tells the story of their relationship, structured around five trips to Provincetown — including that first meeting, another visit when the town was eerily quiet during the pandemic, and finally, a trip to spread Jonathan’s ashes. Morrison jokes about being a “chubby chaser” for being attracted to larger men, about Jonathan’s laugh being so big that Morrison first assumed he was high on molly, and about arguing with a would-be mugger because Morrison didn’t want to give up a phone where he had saved his photos of Jonathan.
Morrison will discuss the creative process that produced Sugar Daddy during a question-and-answer session at Twenty Summers on Saturday, May 31 with Broadway producer Ron Burrage. But for the rest of his one-week Twenty Summers residency in Provincetown, Morrison is working on a different project: writing a screenplay, also about grief and based on a visit to Provincetown.
“It’s a very fictionalized, fantasticalized movie,” he says. “A young widower and his Gen Z roommates travel to Provincetown to spread his late partner’s ashes, then are taken on a magical odyssey by a community of these zany, queer elders who teach them where they’re coming from and what it means to grieve.”
Morrison says he relished the idea of being able to devote long hours to writing in the town that has inspired him. He’s struggled, he says, to set aside time to write in his new home in Los Angeles, where work includes weekly comedy gigs.
“I’m on draft 9,422, so I’ve just about cracked it,” he says of his progress on the screenplay.
The story revolves around a Wizard of Oz-like journey to find the ashes after the friends get sucked into a magic painting. Morrison puts current experiences of grief in the context of the losses that “Provincetown elders” went through during the AIDS epidemic.
But the overall tone, he says, “is a very different approach to grief, and a lot more fun, funny, ridiculous, and trippy” than his past work. There’s a part written with filmmaker John Waters in mind, Morrison adds.
Humor, in addition to grief support groups, have been vital in helping Morrison deal with loss. His current project builds from Sugar Daddy’s unexpectedly successful integration of humor and tragedy.
The title Sugar Daddy is partly a play on words that refers to Morrison’s diagnosis with type 1 diabetes. Doctors told him the disease might have been exacerbated by grief. Morrison’s willingness to talk about a chronic disease on stage seemed interesting to Twenty Summers, according to producer Cecilia Parker. The conversation with Clark, titled “Bringing Sugar Daddy to Life: On Creative Process,” will touch on tragedy, illness, and trauma, but with winking humor.
Sugar Daddy developed from “grief material” Morrison began adding to his comedy shows. “It started from a selfish place of coping, and just talking about it, and it was even angsty and angry,” says Morrison. “Then it changed and became exploratory. I think people assume I’m really good with grief because I talk about it so much, but it’s actually the opposite. I’m fascinated with my own struggles and discomfort with it.”
Morrison has performed stand-up at clubs and comedy festivals in New York City and around the country, including at the Crown & Anchor, Pilgrim House, the Red Room, and a Provincetown Town Hall Pride event. His TV appearances have included Late Night With Seth Meyers, Comedy Central Stand-Up Featuring, and The Drew Barrymore Show.
Morrison says he performed an early version of Sugar Daddy in Provincetown in 2022. It became a hit that year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was during the 2023 off-Broadway run, extended from 6 weeks to 13, that he says he realized he wanted Sugar Daddy to become a true theater piece.
That presented an interesting challenge because “through and through I’m a stand-up comedian,” says Morrison, but he’s realized that stand-up comedy and theater “could not be more different.”
After working on his own for a long time, he collaborated in 2024 on a different staging with director Stephen Brackett (Tony Award-nominated for A Strange Loop) and worked on a new set, lighting, and sound design. For last fall’s Los Angeles shows, Morrison stood in a circle of light bulbs placed around the stage, with video projections behind him. One was of a giant image of a man’s belly as Morrison talked about Jonathan.
Morrison says writing and performing Sugar Daddy has been cathartic — and he hopes it can be for the audience, too.
“I don’t know how other people grieve without doing a solo show,” he says. “But then, of course, it becomes something that’s not yours, and you have to let it have its own life. You let other people find meaning in it and start to understand how they are affected by it. It’s a special feeling.”
The Comedy of Tragedy
The event: Bringing “Sugar Daddy” to Life, with Sam Morrison
The time: Saturday, May 31, 7 p.m.; doors open at 6
The place: Hawthorne Barn, 29 Miller Hill Road, Provincetown
The cost: $20 suggested donation at 20summers.org
