If there’s one thing the holiday season promises unequivocally, and for better or worse, it’s a heightened sense of introspection. The intensified emphasis on family sharpens everyone’s gaze on their own life, amplifying joy or grief, or whatever emotion is swimming to the surface with the strongest strokes. There couldn’t be a better moment to present the introspective contemporary piece, “Tiny Beautiful Things.” For Red Barn Theatre, which presents the piece as the opener for its 40th season, there also seems to be some internal sense of taking stock, reminiscing without looking back.
The production manages the task of feeling nostalgic without the slightest whiff of melancholy or cliched longing. Artistic director Joy Hawkins set out to select a play that would serve as a sort of love letter to the audiences who have followed the theater company through all, or part, of its storied history. She’s chosen a gem with “Tiny Beautiful Things.”
The play was originally developed for the stage by Broadway and film actor, Nia Vardalos (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) who adapted the content of Cheryl Strayed’s collection of advice columns she originally wrote for the online literary journal, “The Rumpus.”
Audiences have latched on to the content, which feels real enough to be convincing but charismatic enough to rise above the drudgery of actual reality. “Variety” called the original production “a theatrical hug.”
The intimacy of Hawkins’ production at the Red Barn certainly retains that mood, but allows for a greater empathy that transcends the feeling of a one-sided hug from a fledgling advice columnist. In a small theater space in Key West, the play feels more like a group therapy session. Sound awful? Not at all. It’s group therapy in which the person seeking help doesn’t need to say a word. Healing for the laid-back set. We are simply allowed to sit back, listening to the breath and sniffles, sighs and giggles of our seatmates, while having the lessons of relatable scenes wash over us. And really, isn’t that the reason we seek out live theater in the first place? Theater-goers want to feel something — to bear witness as part of a collective consciousness that exists for only a couple hours before dissipating. “Tiny Beautiful Things” captures that need and plays to it with precision.
There’s great beauty in the play’s relatability, which comes not just from the breadth of topics broached, but also the delivery of the actors. As the various and varied advice-seekers, Morgan Fraga Pierson, David Black and Arthur Crocker are forced to be chameleons, oscillating between accents and ages, but more impressively, through personal stories that range from absurdly humorous to deeply tragic. They present their conflicts convincingly, with loads of heart, and occupy the quiet spaces between their letters with subtlety and depth. Nicole Nurenberg, in the starring role of Sugar, delivers a gut-punch performance — truly one of the strongest in Key West, in recent memory. In her hands, the character deftly mines difficult topics ranging from addiction to loss to abuse, with the proper mix of deep reverence and light-hearted shrugs, reminding her readers, and her audience that all they can do is try to reach beyond their circumstance. Nurenberg’s take on the columnist is genuine, humble and insightful. In fact, her turn is so convincing that she may want to silence her social media for the month before Key Westers start asking for life advice.
In an era in which empathy is suppressed and emotions are held at arm’s length, “Tiny Beautiful Things” strolls boldly onto the stage, determined to break us down and make us feel something, anything, everything. You could pay your therapist $100 an hour, but perhaps over the holiday season you should instead treat yourself to ninety minutes with Sugar and her advice-seekers. After all, that $100 will score you two tickets, with enough left over for a glass of wine. Self-care, people.
“Tiny Beautiful Things”
Now through Jan. 4, 2020
Shows at 8 p.m.
Tickets at redbarntheatre.com or by calling 305-296-9911
