2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 6

Talk about mirror images! Denver Center replacement actor Olivia Wilson steps into ‘A Christmas Carol’ role mom Leslie O’Carroll made iconic

It was only the first act of the third preview performance of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s latest seasonal production of “A Christmas Carol,” and Steve Wilson was already sobbing in the audience. Like, ugly crying. Like, without-a-Kleenex weeping.

At intermission, the kind – and kind of concerned – woman seated next to him leaned in and said: “It’s so nice to see somebody who’s so moved by live theater!”

Which turned Wilson’s tears to laughter.

He explained to this woman that he was not having a Scrooge-like existential catharsis. No, his tears were of pride and joy. He told her that the substitute actor playing Mrs. Fezziwig at this performance was his daughter, Olivia Wilson. And that Olivia went on without a rehearsal. (And, by the way, he said later in an interview: “She was perfect!”)

Wilson apologized, he said, for being distracting. (More like totally endearing.)  

And that wasn’t even the half of how lovely this story is. The other half is Leslie O’Carroll – Steve Wilson’s wife and Olivia Wilson’s mother. O’Carroll is a legend in her own right for having played the very same Mrs. Fezziwig on this very same Wolf Theatre stage in no less than 22 of the Denver Center’s 32 seasonal stagings of “A Christmas Carol.”

It’s been four years since O’Carroll last played Mrs. Fezziwig. But at the very same moment Olivia was making her Mrs. Fezziwig debut, Leslie was performing on another Denver Center stage about 300 feet to the east. She was just starting her third week of performances in a silly new cabaret comedy called “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” in the Garner Galleria Theatre.

“It’s very fast, very campy and super fun,” O’Carroll said.

Cast at an early age

Olivia Wilson was clearly born for the stage, like it or not. (For the record: She loves it.)

Her parents both earned their master’s degrees from the Denver Center’s former National Theatre Conservatory, and both would be considered licensed stage clowns, if such licenses existed. Olivia was born into a stroller that O’Carroll often pushed through the doors of the Mizel Arts and Culture Center, a place Wilson led for 26 years before (and during) stints with the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company and, now, CenterStage Theatre Company in Louisville.

O’Carroll, a surgical comic actor who can also punch you in the throat with her dramatic chops, has performed with 15 Colorado theater companies. But her artistic home remains the Denver Center, where she has appeared in more than 50 plays and musicals.

“I first stepped onto the stage at the DCPA when I was 24 years old,” O’Carroll said before her daughter interjected: “So I beat her by a year. Woohoo!”

Olivia is 23 and a recent graduate of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Did I mention they are (adorably) competitive?

That Leslie and Olivia’s stage histories are now intersecting is exactly the kind of irresistible story the annual True West Awards were made to tell. The goal is to celebrate 30 positive stories from the local theater year without categories or nominations. Mother and daughter assuming the same role in the same show (if not in the exact same costume) certainly fits the bill.

Olivia’s parents are no strangers to these True West Awards. And this is not the first time the family has shared an award for dressing up alike.

Steve and Leslie were honored in 2016 for another “you’d never believe it” stage moment. O’Carroll was having the year of her life. Arvada Center director Lynne Collins really wanted her to play the battle-axe Madame Parnelle in her production of “Tartuffe,” but O’Carroll was contracted to join the Denver Center for her 18th go-round as Mrs. Fezziwig two weeks before “Tartuffe” was scheduled to close. No problem: Steve stepped in and filled the battle-axe bill, dress and all. Hard to say who was a bigger hoot. Some didn’t even pick up on the switch.

Steve was also named the True West Awards’ 2014 Colorado Theatre Person of the Year, in large part because of the excellence he brought as a director to the nationally acclaimed Phamaly Theatre Company’s big summer musicals.

But life in the Wilson family definitively shifted in October, when Olivia received an email from Denver Center Theatre Company Director of Casting Grady Vander Soapes, who had just conducted a general, community-wide audition for area hopefuls. Olivia had auditioned, hoping to be considered perhaps for a place in one of the Denver Center’s foundational education programs – Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, which tours condensed Bard adaptations to area schools in a pickup truck.

“I was actually hanging out at my friend’s house, and I look at my phone and I see this email from the Denver Center that says ‘A Christmas Carol,’ and I was like, ‘Wait, what is this?’” Olivia said.

She knew the Denver Center always hires a considerable number of local actors for roles in “A Christmas Carol,” but a full-fledged role was too much for a new college grad to hope for. But perhaps Soapes was inviting her to come back and read for what is called a “swing” – a job that differs from the more commonly known term for a replacement (“understudy”).

Here’s the diff: In live theater, anunderstudy is an actor who is already cast in a small role in a show, but is asked to also learn one or two larger roles in case an actor falls ill. A “swing” is a performer who is fully focused on filling in for multiple roles that have no designated understudies. Swings learn often complex ensemble “tracks,” which include acting, dancing and speaking.

Olivia was “super excited” just to see what might happen in the next round of auditions. But instead …

“I open the email, and it’s an actual contract offer to be a swing for four tracks in ‘A Christmas Carol,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘No, this can’t be real. I am reading it wrong.’ So I said to my friend: ‘Hold on; I just need you to read this email back to me in detail real quick.’ And it said: ‘Olivia Wilson, we’d love for you to join us,’ and it listed the four tracks I would be covering. And when I saw that Mrs. Fezziwig was one of them. I was in shock.”

Naturally, of course, she called her mom. She was in shock, too.

Olivia’s four tracks are significant. She was being asked to cover for Belle (the Young Scrooge’s love interest), Mary (the Cratchit matriarch), Martha (her eldest daughter) and, of course, Mrs. Fezziwig, the gregarious and jolly co-host of the Christmas party who, let’s just say, clinks a lot of carefully timed beer steins during the play’s biggest musical number. Not easy for a replacement actor to pull off in the best of circumstances. Certainly not in the third performance in front of an audience. But this is why replacement actors do their prep work well in advance. On their own, if they have to. And they do.

Replacement actors do not get a dedicated rehearsal with the primary actors they might be performing with while the show is under construction. Preview performances are for your A-team to get their game down pat. Once the show is open, a rehearsal is scheduled specifically to work with understudies and swings. Olivia didn’t have that luxury.

Ironically, Olivia had already stepped in a few times as Belle during final dress rehearsals when the primary actor had a scooter accident. On the evening of Nov. 22 – one day after the first preview, Olivia got served (notice) that the actor playing Mrs. Fezziwig had gotten word of a heartbreaking family emergency. So, you know: Be ready.

 “Our wonderful stage manager, Malia Stoner, pulled me aside and said: ‘Hey, I would just be really aware of this track.’ And I was like, ’OK. I am not taking that lightly.’

“You never know what’s going to happen. And it is my job to be ready when something happens. So – I got ready.”

O’Carroll had plenty of replacement experience in her early days. She told her daughter to remember that these are not her roles. You are merely a caretaker.

“The important thing for any replacement actor to remember is that it’s not about you. It’s about everybody else,” she said. “It’s about them having confidence that you are not going to go off on your own and wreck their show.”

Hours later, the call came telling Olivia that she would be playing Mrs. Fezziwig at preview performance No. 3 on the evening of Nov. 23.

She did not freak out. (Her dad kinda did. The Wilsons are an emotive family.)

“I can be an anxious person,” Olivia said. “But I was actually like, ‘No. I truly know what I’m doing. I am very confident that I have put in the work. I know her entrances. I know her exits. I shadowed her backstage. I know her makeup changes.’

“I told myself: ‘I am literally getting paid to do this. My job as a swing is to support the people I’m covering and make them feel confident that they do not need to worry about me.”

O’Carroll’s game-time advice, essentially: Just stay calm and enjoy it.”

“I mean, she’s watched me do this for a very long time,” O’Carroll said. “I’m sure there was pressure of, ‘Oh, I’ve got to be my mom,’ but I told her: ‘Don’t forget to bring yourself to the role, because you are a unique person, and you have your own flare and your own joy and your own idea of who you think Mrs. Fezziwig is. Don’t try to be me. And don’t try to be her. Just be you – in the context of what you’ve rehearsed.

“Although I think I did say to her: ‘Make sure you have good fan work,” she added with a laugh. “It gets hot under there.”

Since the arrival of COVID, the Denver Center and other area theater companies have greatly expanded the number of actors hired for swing and understudy roles. Because colds and flu can wipe out entire shows at a time of year when companies really can’t afford to lose revenue.

That means it’s a pretty good bet that by the time ‘A Christmas Carol’ closes on Dec. 28, Olivia will have played all four of her swing tracks, some perhaps multiple times.

She already knows this experience has made her a better actor.

“It’s helped me gain confidence in myself as a performer and also in my ability to support everyone around me,” she said. “It’s just such an incredible feeling.”

Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

‘A Christmas Carol’

• Who: Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company

• When: Through Dec. 28

• Where: Wolf Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex

• Tickets: $53-$125 at denvercenter.org

‘Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors’

• Who: Presented by Denver Center Attractions

• When: Through May 10

• Where: Galleria Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex

• Tickets: $61 at denvercenter.org

More True West Awards coverage:

• 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano

• Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’

• Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact

• Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side

• Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77