It’s advice McElhinney has heard before, from a friend who died from cancer at a young age. “Watching her suffer and watching her fight it and watching her in the end accept it, that was the best advice ever,” she says. “And that’s: ‘It’s your life. And you decide how you want it to be’.”

That message, paired with the sense of connection nurtured in the theatre, feels urgent after the isolation of the pandemic. “After the previous few years we’ve had, I think there’s been a real desire to sit in that [theatre] space with other people and connect to them, and share the grief and pain that we’ve all been dealing with,” McElhinney says.

As an actor, McElhinney is used to accessing her feelings of grief to embody a character. But she notes the way Tiny Beautiful Things invites everyone in the room to experience big emotions together.

“It gives people a very safe place to feel some pretty big emotions,” she says. “It has proved to be incredibly healing for me and for the audiences that come to see it.”

The play is not all stories of grief and hardship. There is a great sense of levity too, including in a letter from a man deciding whether to dress up for his girlfriend who thinks Santa is sexy.

Lewis points out that is true to life; there is humour in our most tragic moments. When she was in the hospital waiting room after her son died, she remembers the song playing on the radio: Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky.

“I remember sitting with my husband, and we just laughed,” Lewis says. “Tears were pouring down my face. But that was what was on the radio.”

“It was funny then, and it’s funny now. That’s life. Sometimes life is more farce than tragedy. It’s ridiculous. And I think [Strayed] has a sense for the ridiculous.”

Tiny Beautiful Things is at Belvoir St Theatre until March 2.

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