Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter
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Dear Nia
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From April 7-19, Prairie Theatre Exchange is presenting Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted for the stage by Winnipeg’s own Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and based on the online advice column Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed.
In 2012, Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail) transformed her columns (originally penned anonymously) into a book — Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar — featuring authentic and meaningful responses to readers’ queries. It debuted at No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller list in the advice/self-help category.
A former heroin addict who suffered sexual abuse as a child and whose mother died when she was in college, Strayed offers advice without judgment from a deeply personal place; reviewers praised her “radical empathy” and “generosity of spirit.”
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In the New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones said of the book: “Sugar doesn’t coddle her readers — she believes them, and hears the stories inside the story they think they want to tell. She manages astonishing levels of empathy without dissolving into sentiment, and sees problems before the reader can.”
According to Ben Brantley, theatre critic for the New York Times, Vardalos, who adapted the book with director Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and writer Marshall Heyman (Dietland) and starred as Sugar, tapped into the book’s essential empathetic quality.
“(M)ore than anything, Tiny Beautiful Things turns out to be about the endangered art of listening to — and really hearing and responding to — other people,” he wrote in his review.
Now Applause subscribers will get the chance to benefit from Vardalos’s experience onstage, as she’s agreed to play Dear Sugar on the page.
Nia Vardalos (Chris Pizzello / The Associated Press files)
Here’s your opportunity to ask a question and have it answered by Vardalos in our Dear Nia feature. Some letters will be published in the Free Press arts section on April 11; some will be on display in the lobby of PTE during the run of the play.
As with the original Dear Sugar column, we’re looking for letters “that are at most two to three paragraphs long and perhaps only a sentence or two. Your letter can be about matters large or small, about big troubles or tiny quibbles.”
Dear Nia is only open to Applause readers. Simply respond to this email with your question by Monday, March 30, for a chance to be included. All submissions will be anonymous.
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Jill Wilson
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TELEVISION: If you were to ask me to name the most underrated, underwatched TV comedy-drama of the last decade, I would probably say Patriot, the oddball spy series created by Steven Conrad on Prime Video.
So I was very excited to hear Conrad had a new series on Crave, DTF St. Louis, and it does not disappoint … even as it confounds.
There are only four episodes available (new ones are released Sunday) and like Patriot, it’s impossible to summarize, but it features ASL interpreter Floyd (a wonderful, complicated David Harbour), who is married to Carol (Linda Cardellini) and dealing with her troubled son and their money troubles.
Also in the mix is his best friend and co-worker Clark (Jason Bateman ), a St. Louis TV weatherman who convinces Floyd to sign up for the illicit dating app of the title.
Other than its dry, absurd humour and offbeat vibe, DTF St. Louis has little in common with Patriot, but it’s also (I think!) about male friendship and male unhappiness, and it’s funny in a way that makes me laugh out loud but with a question mark, if that makes any sense. It’s kind of sad and fully bonkers and I love it so far.
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Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter
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