Sugar Daddy at Underbelly Boulevard, London Review
Photo by Mark Senior
Written by Jasmine for Theatre and Tonic.
Disclaimer: Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review. All views are my own
Sam Morrison’s ‘Sugar Daddy’ will have you caught between laughter and tears in the brilliant hour and fifteen minutes you spend with him. Created based on a true story of Morrison finding and losing love, it is equal parts charming and moving.
Morrison does a wonderful job bringing us into his world and this story. This isn’t a show where you just sit back disengaged and watch from beyond the fourth wall; it feels more conversational than that - and Morrison is really quick to adapt to his audience, making sure everyone is brought in on the jokes. This means that then in the more vulnerable sections it feels like a really supportive space, and you sympathise all the more with his story because it’s like being told it by a friend Comedy more than anything else is a collaboration between the audience and the comedian, so when that is used to build a relationship for talking about more difficult things in shows like this, it is incredibly effective. In fact, despite its subject matter, most of the show is really quite lighthearted; it focuses so often on the good memories or the funny ones - including a wonderful skit about the Jehovah’s Witnesses - meaning its sadder moments really impact you when they come.
These moments, when they arise, are beautifully written - the surprising details and humour that Morrison injects even at the darkest moments make them even more tender and moving. You leave with a very real sense of their relationship and how positive an experience it was, despite how others might have perceived it.
This is also an incredibly cohesive production - the set design (Hugo Dodsworth), direction (Amrou Al-Kadhi) and story all work wonderfully together, with the imagery of the show matching the bright and funny tone of the world Morrison describes and offering a clear contrast to the darker parts of the story. I especially loved the animated seagulls and how seagulls were used as a recurring image of the show. The single square deck on stage also created a great sense of switching space when needed, and allowed us to return to the most important location in the story, really quickly and clearly.
It is a real success to bring together all the elements this show features so clearly: love, grief, tragedy, a diabetes diagnosis, and the queer culture of Provincetown in the US. Morrison’s style of comedy and Al-Kadhi’s clear direction are really well suited to this; everything felt laid out into easy to follow beats, and Morrison’s audience interaction made sure his moments landed as they should, even if the initial reaction wasn’t as full-on as it should be. In fact, the tools like the voiceover that were used occasionally to work against/provide context to what Morrison was saying - ie. Encouraging him to face his grief - weren’t actually needed - it all came clearly through in Morrison’s performance. In these moments, you are taken a little bit out of it, whereas the moments we go back into his memories and spend time in his world, or when Morrison gets to do a bit of stand up, are the best bits.
This is such a unique and surprisingly beautiful story, and Morrison is a brilliant storyteller - so go out and catch this show at Underbelly Boulevard until the 4th April; you won’t regret it.
★ ★ ★ ★
