'Lives' takes up cause of workers

Melanie Marnich's These Shining Lives -- a world premiere based on the real-life poisoning of female workers at a watch factory -- is genuinely tragic, but it's also as one-sided and gilded as the faces of its tainted timepieces.

The play, running at Center Stage, is based on a landmark workers' compensation case filed by employees of the Radium Dial Co. in the 1930s. When the factory moved to Ottawa, Ill., many women thought they'd found their dream job painting faces on watch dials. They received a high wage for relatively undemanding work in comfortable surroundings.

But the mostly female employees began to fall ill, as radium infiltrated their systems. In one heartbreaking scene, a new hire is instructed to daub her brush in the luminescent radium, paint the dials -- and then shape the tip of the brush with her lips. After going through this motion enough times, the women's hands, teeth and hair glowed green in the dark.

When the workers expressed their concerns, they at first were ignored and then fired.

It's true that some stories are so heinous they only have one side, but I kept feeling I wasn't getting the full story. Marnich idealizes her characters and streamlines their plight at the expense of narrative complexity.

For instance, when did company officials know that the sparkling dust they added to their paint was a hazard? I doubt that any company deliberately sets out to murder its workers -- if only for reasons of profitability. In the 1930s, the health benefits of radium were widely promoted in products from toothpaste to hair creams to food.

Marnich's play makes it clear that there was an unconscionable cover-up, but we never meet the people who authorized the shell game.

An example of a more engrossing approach to corporate malfeasance was taken by the directors of the 2005 documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

The arrogance, the audacity of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling as they essentially held up the state of California and bankrupted their own workers was breathtaking. I certainly didn't leave the movie theater sympathizing with these villains. But the movie helped me understand something about the morally bankrupt business culture from which they sprang.

Marnich selectively arrays her facts like numerals on a dial and then applies a gold wash over the surface. Surely, no marriage is as unfailingly supportive and egalitarian as that between the hunky steelworker Tom and Catherine, his bright teenage bride.

Doubtless the women were vilified by some newspapers when they filed their workers' compensation lawsuit. But did no journalists champion their cause? That's hard to imagine in an era when Chicago was rife with so-called "sob sisters" who specialized in melodramatic tales of human suffering.

Nor does the play make reference to other key social events that might explain some of the hostility the women faced, such as the devastating stock market crash of 1929.

To her credit, Marnich displays a graceful prose style and considerable flair as a storyteller. And the acting is solid.

As real-life plaintiff Catherine Donohue, actress Emma Joan Roberts is a sweet-voiced force of nature. In the role of her husband, Jonathan C. Kaplan -- clad in a tight white T-shirt, and willing to pitch in with the cooking -- is so targeted toward contemporary female fantasies, he might attract groupies. Cheryl Lynn Bowers and Kate Gleason are endearingly quirky as two of Catherine's co-workers.

Only Kelly McAndrew seems to struggle with the character of Catherine's co-worker and best friend, Charlotte. The role is of a recognizable type from that era: the wisecracking redhead, with a hip flask in her pocket and a swagger in her step. It is as though McAndrew is trying to wriggle into her grandmother's dress, tugging here and smoothing there. The two women may be the same size, but even so, the garment doesn't quite fit.

Alexander Dodge has designed a simple, effective set. Anita Yavich's costumes have period charm without going overboard, though I did wonder why the women wore the same outfit to work every day for nine years. Director David Schweizer keeps the show ticking along.

But no matter how well-oiled its mechanisms, a watch that hasn't been accurately set won't tell the right time.

mary.mccauley@baltsun.com

Related topic galleries: Social Security, Health and Safety at Work, Wages and Pensions, Employees, Employers, Clothing and Textiles Industry

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