In sifting through the desperate pleas for guidance, she meditates on her own life, sharing the most intimate details of her experience of addiction, sexual abuse, self-sabotaging chaos and unrecoverable loss. Instead of answers, she provides illumination. Some of the letters are wacky, a good many are ribald, a few are profoundly sad. The stirring material, deriving from the compassionate counsel Strayed offered readers of the online literary magazine the Rumpus (collected in “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar”), needs only a structure that will allow the anguished letter-writing voices and the deeply searching replies to sing.

You’ll not only weep but you’ll feel more emotionally intact for having done so.Ĭonceived by Marshall Heyman (“Dietland”), “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail and writer and actor Vardalos (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), the project is borne aloft by an appealing theatrical simplicity. The production, which runs through March 17 at the Old Globe in San Diego, is guaranteed to provoke a cathartic release. This connection between the stage and the self-appointed journalistic sage only occurred to me during “Tiny Beautiful Things,” the lovely, heartfelt theatrical adaptation by Nia Vardalos of Cheryl Strayed’s collection of Dear Sugar columns. Forums of instruction and delight, they appeal to anyone who could use some help negotiating the often trivial, ultimately tragic affair that Balzac christened the human comedy.

Advice columns and theaters have more in common than you might think.

Tiny beautiful things review