The “Phoenix Theatre” moniker may be dead, but its occupants are rising from the ashes.
For years, Theatre Group’s primary home and (identity) were at the Theatre On Broadway, at 13 S. Broadway. But that’s just another gutted theater now, so Theatre Group is reinventing itself at its secondary, Phoenix Theatre space, which it has cleverly renamed the Theatre Off Broadway (1124 Santa Fe Drive).
Rekindled excitement and optimism are evident as you walk into the “new” TOB: The lobby is painted bright white; art and botany line the walls. Most significant, the company is again staging a piece with meat: “Tiny Tim Is Dead” is a poignant and uncompromising holiday alternative about the homeless at Christmas.
It also happens to be the best-performed play by Theatre Group in two years.
It’s not that “A Christmas Carol” is without substance. It’s that thousands of people get their hearts refilled with a dose of the Dickens each December, only to drive home straight past the very downtrodden street people who populate Barbara Lebow’s 1991 play.
It’s a cold and smoky Christmas Eve under a bridge where five adults and a mute boy live. Lebow (best known for “A Shayna Maidel”) makes no attempt to idealize her characters or sanitize the factors that have brought each here.
Verna (Shelly Bordas) is a schizophrenic baby-making machine whose kids have all been seized by the state except one mute, nameless boy (Isaiah Miller). Otis (Keith- wayne Brock Johnson) is a wounded war hero who is getting meaner by the day; wheelchair-bound Charlie (C.J. Hosier) is a crack-addicted former suburban father; Filo (Arthur Martinez) is an illegal immigrant from Central America. The departing Azalee (Gwen Harris) is a college grad who’s landed a job interview and a bed in a shelter. She’s the embodiment of possibility.
This is a world-weary family related not by race, class or education but by the same, sad end result for each.
The play was developed in cooperation with Atlanta Day Shelter for Women, and it represents the homeless as the spectrum of society, in reverse: Those only a paycheck away from functioning in society again, to those whose addictions and illnesses make them too far gone.
But this is a holiday story, even if its protagonist is delusional, paranoid and suspicious. All Verna, who’s not much more than a child herself, can offer her boy as a gift is a story: “A Christmas Carol,” as enacted by this ragtag group of vagrants who themselves might ask only for a little heat, leftover food and mittens.
They interpret Dickens’ tale as an analogy for their own situation. Most find hope in the telling, cumulating in a joyous reggae round of Ziggy Marley’s “Don’t You Kill Love.”
But to Otis, “A Christmas Carol” is nothing but a fairy tale. There is no reformed Scrooge waiting to save them. Rather, he sees only unreformed Scrooges in the faces of all those who pass them by each day. As such, the storytelling erupts almost inevitably into anger and violence, even though the underlying mood remains somehow steeped in a sense of hopefulness, without ever lapsing into a dishonest sentimentality.
This is a huge acting challenge, of course, and Bordas and Johnson anchor a solid ensemble who tackle their difficult roles with headstrong bravado. Hosier is heartbreaking, and Martinez exudes an ebullience. But it is the brassy Harris, a Denver Center Theatre Company veteran, who elevates any play the minute she walks on a stage.
“Tiny Tim Is Dead” isn’t typical holiday fare. It’s sad and inspiring and cautionary at once. But it’s just as much about spiritual resurrection as Dickens. Otis is right, though: There is no Scrooge here. The onus is on the audience. Lebow isn’t asking you to single-handedly eradicate homelessness. How about instead just helping the homeless get through another night? Because if you’re a homeless person, any night not spent shuddering through the brutal night chill might as well be Christmas to them.
This all makes a fitting precursor to Curious Theatre’s anticipated “The Denver Project,” a world-premiere commission that in May will similarly explore homelessness, gentrification and community responsibility.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Tiny Tim is Dead”
Presented by Theatre Group at Theatre Off Broadway, 1124 Santa Fe Drive. Written by Barbara Lebow. Directed by Steven Tagedal. Starring Shelly Bordas, Keithwayne Brock Johnson, C.J. Hosier, Arthur Martinez and Gwen Harris. 1 hour, 45 minutes. Through Jan. 5. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. $12-$22 (2-for-1 Thursdays). 303-777-3292,
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