LOS ANGELES — It was quite a weekend of theater, with three plays seen in succession, all featuring four women gradually coming to their power in a society meant to keep them down.
Let’s start with the one that most impressed, the lovingly written and expertly performed These Shining Lives, about four representative women in the 1920s and early 1930s who worked painting iridescent glow-in-the-dark dials on watch faces in a factory in Ottawa, Ill., about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
Playwright Melanie Marnich has captured not only the language and music of these women, whose idea of a fun day is an outing on the shores of Lake Michigan, but their aspiration to earn a few dollars, to become financially independent and able to treat themselves to a banana split or a new pair of shoes once in a while. The pace steps up as with each turn of their workplace disease, the women are forced to overcome expected demeanors of shyness and humility if they are to pursue justice.
Marnich’s play, inspired by real people and actual events in what comes across as a kind of unsentimental 1930s Federal Theater Project docudrama format, premiered in Baltimore in 2008, and has enjoyed a number of well-received subsequent productions since. Sources for the drama include Ross Mullner’s Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy (American Public Health Association, 1999) and Claudia Clark’s Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997).
Of the four women who all gradually start feeling the effects of radium poisoning from their years of work with the substance, only Catherine (Abigail Stewart) is married, with two twin children, a boy and girl (unseen but voice-overed by Finn Martinsen and Eloise Lili Martinsen). The drama focuses on her domestic life with husband Tom Donohue (Isaac Jay), a World War I vet and skilled high-altitude construction worker on the new skyscrapers, whose wages alone barely keep the family housed and fed. Catherine’s additional income is no mere “pin money” for frivolous luxuries but an essential contribution to the family budget, especially so as the Roaring Twenties dissolve into the Depression Thirties.
The other three women are the wannabe Jazz Age liberated Charlotte (Jessica Woehler), who works while looking after her aging mother—the action takes place a decade or so before the New Deal’s Social Security program started kicking in. And Frances (Shannon Woo), a timid young lady still crimped by an outdated obeisance to Victorian morality, and Pearl (Allison Schlicher), addicted to bad jokes of the “Knock, knock” and “chicken-crossing-the-road” schools. The warm bond shared by these disparate souls is a prominent feature of the play.
Aside from Tom, two other male actors share the stage with the four women: John Colella plays Mr. Reed, the women’s heartless boss, whose job it is to fire the women once they get too sick to come in every day. He also plays the serious Chicago Dr. Dalitsch, who will be the first, finally, to name the disease the women are suffering and to confirm its sad terminal prognosis, as well as the minor role of a judge in the eventual court case. And Michael Kachingwe also plays multiple roles: The company’s Dr. Rountree, whose job it is to pooh-pooh the women’s complaints and recommend aspirin, a radio announcer, a reporter, and Leonard Grossman, the lawyer for the women’s case against the company. It’s in that role that he recommends that given the sensationalism of the case and the storm of lies and misrepresentations that will inevitably attend it, only the worker with the most serious condition—and with a husband and family—be the plaintiff, if she can withstand the furious publicity. As the play’s protagonist, that part naturally falls to Catherine.
Playwright Marnich places Tom and Mr. Reed together at one point in the courtroom drama, where it becomes painfully clear how Tom had been prepared to give his life to his country in World War I, while the impeccably fitted-out company boss was profiting off his workers’ suffering. No further explication of the class difference was needed.
Thom Babbes directs this fast-moving episodic story, which unfolds over the course of 90 minutes without intermission, with frequent quick changes of set and scenery. Crystal Yvonne Jackson is the producer. Chloe Babbes is the technical director, Julia Hibner the stage manager, Joel Daavid the set designer, A. Jeffrey Schoenberg the costume designer, Derrick McDaniel the lighting designer, David Marling the sound designer, Nick Santiago the projection designer, Kevin Williams the prop designer, and Judi Lewin on hair/wig/makeup.
Founded in 1987, the Actors Co-op Theatre Company is an unusual project in and of itself, operating two 99-seat Equity-approved theatres on the campus of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Its membership of 35 “are dedicated to Christ and excellence in theatre.” Given what I have seen in previous productions here, and certainly in this one, I can only conclude that the Christianity its members embrace is 180 degrees away from MAGA’s Christian nationalism. It would seem more at home with Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement. If JC himself were to see this play, I know he’d give it a rave review.
These Shining Lives is the best kind of proletarian theatre, underscoring its points without harangue or pretense. The fact is, the case these women brought made history: Companies could no longer hide behind ignorance in their pursuit of gain. A certain level of accountability to its workers was henceforth the law. But knowing what we know now about the Trump/Musk 2.0 regime, these advances will have to be defended tooth and nail at every step of the way. I suspect that in that grand and noble struggle, a whole new generation of champions of labor and democracy will emerge and the country will be better for it.
These Shining Lives plays through March 30, with performances Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 pm, and Sun. at 2:30 pm. Additional Sat. matinees will take place on March 1 and 15 at 2:30 pm.
Tickets are priced at Adults: $35, Seniors (60 and up): $30, Students with ID: $25.00, and Union Members: $25.00. Student rush tickets are available Fri. nights, and group rates are available. For ticket information visit www.actorsco-op.org or call the box office at (323) 462-8460.
Actors Co-op is located at 1760 N. Gower Street, Hollywood 90028 (on the campus of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood), at the corner of Carlos Ave. Free lot parking for the theatre is available on Carlos, across the street from the entrance to the church complex.
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