Sickness and death make routine cameos, and tragedies must somehow be endured. Parents and children stare across an unbridgeable gulf. Others question the pattern of their relationship failures. Some write in on the brink of extramarital affairs. (The performers are free to assume any age or gender.) But a human channel is provided. Three actors (Teddy Cañez, Natalie Woolams-Torres and Giovanni Adams) voice the words of the various letter writers, whose identities remain abstract. REVIEW: Review: In ‘Poor Yella Rednecks,’ humor and pathos in the struggles of Vietnamese immigrants »
Strayed accepted the unpaid gig while waiting for the publication of “Wild,” the bestseller that would change her life, and though she felt insecure at first about dispensing moral guidance, she approached the task with her customary “radical sincerity.”
The production, directed by Sherri Eden Barber (from the original direction by Thomas Kail, who co-conceived the play with Marshall Heyman and Vardalos), takes place in the comfortably lived-in home of the new Sugar (played by Vardalos), the anonymous agony aunt (as the British like to call their advice columnists) for the literary website the Rumpus. And that try as we may, these realms really can’t be separated.Īdapted from Cheryl Strayed’s collection of “Dear Sugar” columns by the production’s star, Nia Vardalos, “Tiny Beautiful Things” makes choral drama from the letters of advice-seekers clamoring for guidance and the searching replies of an advice-giver who’s the first to admit she doesn’t have all the answers. The self-help journey has privileged the individual over the collective, but what’s refreshing about this play, which opened on Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse, is the understanding that our actions have ethical as well as emotional fallout.
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