A community adrift over the death of a young actor | John Moore

When word of young actor Rob Riney’s death began to spread last weekend, legions of helplessly numb friends and fellow artists responded in just about the only way one can when life delivers a breath-stealing kick to the sternum. They flooded social media channels with photos that told the story of a triumphant, troubled life.

The photos made plain the megawatt smile. The mischievous grin. The love for Batman and Stitch (that weird blue alien dog). The obsession with hot dogs and Sprite. The propensity for attaching unusual objects to his head for laughs.

And they showed Riney in total command of just about every stage in town, from his first professional role in the Town Hall Arts Center’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” when he was but a junior at Bear Creek High School in 2004, to his final role in “Forbidden Broadway” at the Breckenridge Backstage Theatre in 2018.

The sea of photos also articulated the silent questions on everyone’s minds: Why have we not seen one of the most reliable and adored actors in Colorado on a stage in five years? How is it that he is now so abruptly gone at the tender age of 36?

I, too, retreated to my photos. There’s “Robby Rob,” the young man with the perpetual baby face, playing roles he won, time after time, on the strength of that indescribably honey tenor singing voice – even when he looked decades too young and many pounds too slight. When Nick Sugar cast him to play the guerrilla rebel Che in Town Hall’s “Evita,” Riney grew a beard and gained 20 pounds for the role – sprouting all the way up to 150! (And in performance, Sugar said: “He blew me away.”)

But one photo just stopped me in my tracks. It’s a comically illustrated shot of Rob promoting Equinox Theatre’s 2017 regional premiere of “Disaster: The Musical.” He’s wearing both a tux and a quintessentially goofy look on his face while standing in the middle of the ocean, his waist wrapped by a life preserver.

Much like Riney in the last years of his life, I thought. Adrift. Looking for the shore. Grinning and bearing it. Comedy and tragedy masking the same face. Quintessentially Rob.  

Riney died on April 1. He had taken a fall and later died in the hospital of major organ failure, his family said. Whenever a death of anyone so young is reported, that word itself – death – is almost routinely preceded by adjectives like sudden, shocking, surprising or unexpected. Riney’s death was none of those. He had demons, one being alcoholism that was encoded in his DNA. He also had a devilish sense of humor. If this whole horrible thing weren’t so catastrophically awful, he might have even smirked over his April Fool’s death date.

But this was real. Riney’s death has now left many people in the arts community struggling to reconcile the senseless end of a life that was filled with so much … life. The sweetheart whose giddy love of off-key singing was so ironically adorable given his own innate perfect pitch. The prankster who could turn his impression of Mandy Patinkin singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” into performance art.

Kelly Van Oosbree, who directed Riney in more shows than anyone, could not imagine getting married without hearing Riney’s voice as she walked down the aisle. So she asked him to sing Katy Perry's “Teenage Dream.”

On stage and in life, Riney could make you laugh until you cried – or cry until you laughed. When Van Oosbree directed him for the final time, in “Forbidden Broadway,” she said, he came up with a bit that was so funny, she aspirated on a peanut. “That's how dangerous his comedy was,” she said.  

Riney was both an old soul and an old-school musical-theater fan to his core, but he was impossible to peg by category or cliche. His kindred spirits were Broadway legend Carol Channing and country icon Toby Keith. In fact, when the Denver Center hosted local tryouts for its own production of “Forbidden Broadway,” Riney performed “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid” as sung by Channing, Louis Armstrong – and Kermit the Frog.

He was deeply spiritual in his own nebulous way and dearly loved musicals that told religious stories, like “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” “Altar Boyz” and “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” His dream was to write a rock musical about Miriam, the Biblical sister of Moses who took a tambourine in hand and led the Hebrew women in a celebration of singing and dancing after Moses crossed the Red Sea. Miriam was known to embrace diverse voices, both female and male, but paid the ultimate price when God took away her voice for speaking out. Riney connected with her in every way.

“Rob was a completely unique human being on this Earth,” said Chris Arneson, Riney’s partner from 2014-18. “He could be a commanding leading man one minute, then step off the stage and be an instant 12-year-old. He just had this range of maturity and immaturity; of fun and seriousness – all at the same time.”

Riney was born October 17, 1986, the youngest of three children to Melody Jones-Riney and a flawed father who died at about the same age as Rob. Riney excelled in theater at Bear Creek High School and always knew he wanted to be a performer. On the night of his junior prom, he was at the Town Hall Arts Center performing in “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Since then, Riney has performed with just about every theater company that stages musicals from Denver to Fort Collins, among them the Arvada Center, Aurora Fox and Vintage Theatre. It’s hard to find a musical-theater performer in Denver who hasn’t worked with him at some point, and he also performed in the occasional dramatic play or children’s story.

But because performing locally doesn’t pay for squat, Riney worked a lot of odd jobs to keep his dream alive. He was a hotel concierge, a swim instructor, a deli manager, an electrician’s assistant and a solar panel installer. For all three of his high-school years, he got to be a cliff diver, puppeteer and fire juggler at Casa Bonita.

Just about everyone who met Riney was immediately captured by him, Van Oosbree said, because he was not only talented – he was just a good guy. “He was open and funny and interested in you,” she said. “He was a generous human being – and so incredibly funny.”

But anyone who has danced in the dragon’s fire of a loved one’s addiction knows how joy can often mask a whole lot of pain. There was an ever-present duality in Riney’s life, right down to his having a Facebook alter ego named Camron Robbie.

Riney almost died in 2018 from a near-total failure of his digestive system and several surrounding organs. But he got through it, and seemed to be on a better path. He was cast in two upcoming shows that were canceled by the COVID shutdown.

The pandemic was a death sentence for more than a million Americans, and not all of them from COVID. According to the National Library of Medicine, social isolation and loneliness puts those with existing mental-health issues at far greater risk.

A lot of us lost touch with friends and family over the shutdown. And a lot of those who lost touch with Riney are now struggling with their remorse. Yes, there is a lesson to be taken here: Take stock of your people. Check in. But don’t assume the responsibility – or the power – to fix anyone else. You can’t heal a person no matter how hard you hug them. The great paradox of addiction is that the only person who can fix an addict is very often the same person who can’t fix themselves.

For many who are drawn to a creative life, making art is therapy. It restores. It sustains through difficult times. When things got tough in their relationship, Arneson said, the go-to always was, “Let's find you a show. Let's get you on stage, because that is where you need to be.”

Sugar, who directed Riney in perhaps a dozen musicals, randomly ran into him a month ago. He was down, and Sugar knew instinctively what he needed: “I kept telling him: ‘You keep singing. Just keep singing, Rob,’” he said.

Riney was cast so regularly over the years in large part because of that voice. But also because he was so trusted by his fellow artists. He showed up, he put everything he had into his roles, and he brought good energy into the room.

But in the end, like another kindred spirit, Evita Peron, his little body was simply worn out. Despite the ferocious love of a mother who was his roommate to the end. Despite the love and concern of a community that doesn’t know what to do with its sadness. Perhaps it can take some small comfort from a message Riney himself sent out through the Denver Actors Fund back in 2018:

“I always knew the Colorado theater community was a family. But the love and support I have received while I am trying to get back to being healthy and pain-free is beyond anything I could have imagined,” he wrote. “Without your help, I never would have been able to see a light at the end of this very long tunnel.”

A week after Riney’s death, everyone I checked in with for this essay was making art. Van Oosbree was making her directorial debut at the Arvada Center with “Damn Yankees.” Arneson was assisting the direction of a play called “In the Next Room” for Theatre Company of Lafayette. Sugar is preparing to open “Treasure Island” at the Aurora Fox on April 28.

Maybe that’s the healthiest response to this otherwise empty loss. The only response.

Keep on singing.

'Fortune favors the Brave'

"Nothing is an accident.

We are free to have it all.

We are what we want to be.

It's in ourselves to rise or fall.

This is easy to believe.

When distant places call to me.

It's harder from the palace yard.

Fortune favors the free."

– Radames, as sung by Rob Riney in 'Aida,' at the Carousel Dinner Theatre in  2010

Rob Riney life celebration

Rib Riney's life will be celebrated with an all-comers open house from 6-9 p.m. Monday, May 8, at the Clocktower Cabaret, 1601 Arapahoe St. 

More photos of Rob Riney