MAYBE THAT WAS SAID tongue in cheek, maybe not. Anyway, there’s no question that jokes aren’t enough in certain parts of the comedy.
For example, at New York shows, the quirky, swaggering Gastor Almonte has performed a hilarious 10 to 15 minutes about his hatred of oatmeal. In a previous era, that might have amounted to a debut special similar to Jim Gaffigan’s work. But when Almonte turned it into an hour-long solo show, “The Sugar,” that material was augmented with a poignant story about his diabetes diagnosis and how the prospect of mortality changed his family. Watching it, I must confess I wondered what the Gaffigan version of this show would be like.
“The Sugar” was staged at the center of Soho Playhouse, which has developed into a hub of high-profile theatrical stand-up shows, many of which are transfers from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. One of the biggest hits of that year in that theater was Sam Morrison’s breakthrough, “Sugar Daddy”.
Quick-witted and charismatic, Morrison delivered a tightly crafted work about the pain of losing his friend that is both a love letter to his partner and a self-deprecating grieving culture, one that fakes well-meaning condolences and support groups. . He argued that the difference between comedy and tragedy was slight, saying that in Shakespeare’s plays “comedy is only tragedy with marriage at the end”. He explained that grief was lonely and impossible and “nothing helps as much as this show,” for a precise break, “because you guys can’t talk.” And he downright played the vain millennial fool. “What Is Trauma But Content With No Revenue?” he asks, echoing a line from “WandaVision,” a series that’s itself a bereavement story.
Unlike Drew Michael, Morrison is uncomfortable going long without laughing. I’ve seen the show twice, and the second time around the punch lines had gotten faster, more incisive, almost as if the best argument he came up with was to keep you laughing.
Most of these comics share the belief that discussing the topic has become taboo, even stigmatized. “We don’t talk about grief: we keep our grief to ourselves,” says Kayne in “Sorry for Your Loss.” Glazer touched on the same theme. “For that reason alone,” she says, “I want to talk about it.”
