The advice does not come from on high, and it’s a radical departure from those of us who grew up reading real life twin sisters Ann Landers and Dear Abby, whose practical advice and humor also carried a subtle moralistic tone. Like most advice columnists, “Sugar” has no formal training in anything but life, and at one point she tells her readers, “Advice columnists are supposed to have the answers. I’m the one who doesn’t know.” And it’s that level of genuine humility that separates her brand of help from the pack of self-help blogs and “spiritual writers” found online today. There’s none of the vapid sloganeering in her responses, and she isn’t afraid to break out the velvet hammer when answering a letter writer, even one in emotional turmoil. “Nobody will protect you from your suffering,” she responds to one. “You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away… You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it.”
Tiny Beautiful Things isn’t afraid to tackle tough subjects in a frank way. There’s the death of a child at the hands of drunk driver and familial sexual abuse, as well as the tough decision of when to leave a relationship that is no longer working, which she answers with her own experience of leaving her first husband. “He deserved the love of a woman who didn’t have the word “GO!” whispering like a deranged ghost in her ear,” she tells the letter writer. But the piece is not all trauma therapy. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, particularly when one man writes in to seek advice on how to deal with his girlfriend’s Santa fetish.
Tiny Beautiful Things is actually less of a play with a traditional narrative arc than a series of vignettes, like a musical cabaret. Director Lyndsay Allyn Cox paces the show beautifully, and Oliva is superb in the role of Sugar, balancing the brutally heavy dramatic scenes with her finely honed comic flair. She is so natural in the role that one expects that audience members will approach her following the performance for advice on their lives at least a few times during the show’s run. As the Letter Writers, Nael Nacer, Kelly Chick, and Adrian Peguero shine in the difficult roles of playing multiple characters across the age and gender spectrum.
Staged in the bucolic setting of the Windhover Center (my companion remarked that it could double as the set for the camp in “Dirty Dancing”), Gloucester Stage has adapted well to the new reality of the post-COVID experience by creating an amphitheater setting complete with a thrust stage. Patrons are seated side-by-side but must wear masks during the performance, but can go without before and after on the Windhover grounds. This was my first live theater experience since the pandemic, and damn is it good to be back. For tickets and information, go to: boxoffice@gloucesterstage.com
