Dear Sugar, Please Help

Her writing career stuck and her life in disarray, Cheryl Strayed is approached out of the blue to take over a failing online advice column. In this real-life story, she accepts the offer on a fateful lark, adopts the pseudonym “Sugar,” and begins responding to first a trickle and then a torrent of requests for advice.

With no particular background in this kind of work, Sugar decides simply to answer each request as honestly and openly as she can, often basing her responses on her own life experiences. As you might expect, some of the messages are frivolous, but others are as raw and heart-breaking as anything that can happen in a person’s life. More than a few letter writers want to know Sugar’s real name.

In the process, the real person behind Sugar finds herself delving into problematic episodes in her own life, ultimately transforming and healing herself.

Currently on stage at Anaheim’s Chance Theatre, “Tiny Beautiful Things” is based on Cheryl Strayed’s online advice columns, written over a couple years a decade ago, that evolved into a book adapted by actress Nia Vardalos for the stage and further evolved into a Hulu series. First performed in 2016 in New York, this reprise production is directed by Katie Chidester on the broad Chance Theater stage.

At the center of the action, Aubrey Saverino portrays “Sugar” with great humanity, welcoming into her home a shape-shifting cast of letter writers, played with great panache by Jonathon Lamer, Jennifer Richardson, and Sam Minstry.

On stage, the letter writers alternate in engaging Sugar in dialog, but because they have written the letters in their own homes, they are freed to address issues they might have a much harder time actually raising face to face.

Near the end, a particularly heart-rending letter comes from a father whose son was killed by a drunk driver. Rather than ask a direct question, the father submits a set of painful bullet points describing the desolation of his now son-less life.

Sugar reacts to each of the man’s 24 bullet points one by one, each response lifting the father bit by bit from his grief as the two lock eyes, making a connection that heals them both and surely touches audience members.

“Tiny Beautiful Things” plays at the Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Avenue, Anaheim, California 92807, through April 28, Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 and 8 p.m. Tickets at 888.455.4212 or Chance Theater.