Teddy Cañez, Hubert Point-Du Jour, and Natalie Woolams-Torres are the voices and often incongruous faces of these advice-seeking characters. She responds to a letter from the commitment-phobic "Confused" with the story of her mother's premature death she replies to the crude (and oft-repeated) query "WTF?" with a description of her childhood sexual abuse and she answers "Still Not Buying It"'s indictment of her inconsistencies as a spiritual adviser with a detailed inventory of her inner contradictions, including a history of drug use that not many advice columnists would dare make public knowledge. Strayed) includes in her responses to the impassioned letters in her inbox.
There is no linear plot, with only a semblance of what you could call character development, doled out through the intimate personal anecdotes Sugar (i.e. Save the expansion of Rachel Hauck's set design - a meticulously cluttered split-level home that now sits in the Public's largest space (the Newman) - Vardalos re-creates the same performance she debuted last fall. Those advice columns eventually became a best-selling compilation that now lends its name to the theatricalized recitations that adapter and performer Nia Vardalos ( My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and her director Tommy Kail ( Hamilton) have compressed into a tiny beautiful diamond of a show. It's been that way ever since she put on her "Dear Sugar" hat and began churning out advice on love and life with no qualifications other than her own humanity (her "Dear Sugar" predecessor Steve Almond is responsible for the "radical empathy" turn of phrase).
If "radical empathy" is Strayed's gift, radical devotion is the way people are compelled to reciprocate.
In the program notes for Tiny Beautiful Things, now back in New York for its second run at the Public Theater, the Public's artistic director Oskar Eustis writes, "I don't attend church, I don't believe in God, but I believe in Cheryl Strayed." Hubert Point-Du Jour, Nia Vardalos, and Natalie Woolams-Torres in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Vardalos and directed by Tommy Kail, at the Public Theater.
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