Perhaps the most harrowing moment in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” comes when Scrooge asks The Ghost of Christmas Past if Tiny Tim will live.
The Ghost responds: “I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner and a crutch without an owner. . . . If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
Addison Kleinhans is a real-life Tiny Tim. And he’ll appear in that role during several performances of “A Christmas Carol” by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in December.
Addison played Tiny Tim in the Shakespeare Festival’s “A Christmas Carol” last year.
Then, in April, the 6-year-old learned he had contracted acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Four rounds of chemotherapy later, oncologists gave Addison’s parents the green light when the Shakespeare Festival inquired if the young actor was well enough to play the role again.
Forty years ago, a child who contracted leukemia was more likely to die than to survive. Nowadays, due to advances in medicine, the cure rate for children with leukemia is much greater.
Roughly 3,300 children in the United States will be diagnosed with leukemia in 2010, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Addison’s prognosis for a cure is very good. He endured six months of intense chemotherapy, discomforting steroids, frequent blood tests and seven blood transfusions. The final phase of his treatment, which he’s in now, is less intense, but it will last until July 2013.
If Addison has no relapse within five years of his diagnosis, he will be considered cured.
The 6-year-old with big brown eyes and a disarming smile is eager to display his character’s slow, stilted walk.
Ask him his line from the play, and Addison shouts, “God bless us, every one!” in a perfect English accent he learned from his grandmother.
After being confined mostly to the family home and the hospital since April, the opportunity to go to “A Christmas Carol” rehearsals lifted Addison’s spirits, his mother said.
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s show is scheduled for 16 public performances from Thursday through Dec. 24. It will do nine more performances for area schools.
Addison will share the Tiny Tim role with two other young actors, Lucas Bateman and Max Raabe.
