Tiny Beautiful Things
Reviewed by Katie Buenneke
Pasadena Playhouse
Through May 5
RECOMMENDED:
Theatergoers, be warned: After seeing Tiny Beautiful Things, now playing at the Pasadena Playhouse, your heart may feel like a raw nerve. It’s a show that sneaks up on you — how moving can a few actors reading advice columns aloud be?
And yet Tiny Beautiful Things will take your heart and break it into tiny, beautiful pieces. It’s catharsis, in a way only live theater can provide: Yes, you’re crying, but you’re not alone — you can hear the sniffles of the audience around you, and see the actors wiping their eyes with the handkerchiefs they’ve stored in their own pockets.
There’s not a traditional narrative to the show — there’s only one named character, Sugar (Nia Vardalos, who also adapted Cheryl Strayed’s book for the stage, at most performances), and that name is a pseudonym — “Dear Sugar” is an advice column, and the woman who calls herself Sugar doles out advice and stories from her own past in equal measure to the letter writers (Teddy Cañez, Natalie Woolams-Torres, and Giovanni Adams). The letters, as delivered by actors agnostic of the actual writers’ age and gender, run the gamut from silly to serious, but Sugar answers them all with a deep respect, and, as she puts it, “radical sincerity.”
The lack of form creates pacing problems — most people who read advice columns are used to limited exposure, as Sugar, or Abby, or whoever answers one to four peoples’ questions at once. After the first and second half-hours of the show, the amorphousness shows through, but we’re carried through by Vardalos’s warm, welcoming stage presence. The set, designed by Rachel Hauck, is Sugar’s living room, lived-in and familiar, inviting the audience and the letter writers in, as Vardalos pads around in the liminal space between yesterday and today.
A brief look at the program or any of the marketing materials reveals Sugar’s identity to the audience long before the show starts. The dramatic irony is a little strange, as the letter writers are constantly wondering who Sugar is, but we know she’s Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir Wild was adapted into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon a few years ago. The typical audience at the Pasadena Playhouse probably knows who Strayed is — indeed, that probably played into the Playhouse’s decision to include this show in their season — so it’s strange that her identity is played as such a mystery. However, this makes the casting of Vardalos work on a level beyond her capability as an actor. We feel like we know who Strayed is from Wild and the Oscar campaign around it, and we feel like we know Vardalos from the runaway success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding — but we’re removed enough from both the real author and actress to buy the latter as the former.
Sugar readily admits to her writers that she might not be qualified to give advice, and indeed, it occasionally seems like both the writers and Sugar could benefit from a session with a professional therapist, but Sugar serves a different purpose. Writing Sugar an email costs nothing, and there’s a sense of anonymity — you don’t know what Sugar looks like, and Sugar doesn’t know what you look like. But, perhaps most importantly, Strayed’s Sugar doesn’t shy away from sharing the unflattering nitty-gritty of the mistakes she’s made and the hardships she’s come through, telling the letter writers that if she can make it through what she did, they can too. Life can be hard, messy, and unfair, but it’s ultimately worth it for the tiny, beautiful things.
Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through May 5. Pasadena Playhouse.org. Running time: 85 minutes with no intermission.
