No sparkle in Center Stage's latest, 'These Shining Lives'
THEATER REVIEW | These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich, which opened last night at Center Stage, is as one-sided as the face of a watch.
The drama is based on a landmark workers discrimination lawsuit filed by female employees of the Radium Dial Company in northern Illinois in the 1930s. When the women began working at the factory painting radium numerals onto watches, it seemed like an ideal job -- high pay for comfortable, undemanding work.
But when the women began to fall ill with undiagnosed ailments, the company abandoned them.
Marnich chooses to focus on four friends, and how the radium poisoning affected each one of them. She idealizes the women, their home lives and the halcyon early years of their employment. The sole representative of the company is depicted as an amoral, lying, bribing weasel.
But, no marriage is as unfailingly loving and supportive as the one Marnich depicts between the protagonist, Catherine Donohue, and her hunky, steelworker husband, Tom. No job, however stimulating, is so perfect that the workers can't find something to complain about.
And, I suspect that no company deliberately sets out to murder its workers -- though, when it discovers that it is doing so, it may criminally cover up the inconvenient evidence.
Emma Joan Roberts is a winning Catherine, a woman who gradually discovers unsuspected strength in herself. As Tom, Jonathan C. Kaplan is the incarnation of female fantasies: he looks great in a muscle shirt; he cooks and cleans; and he worships his wife.
Kelly McAndrew may have the most difficult acting job in the cast. She must bring to life a type of character common in that era, but who can seem anachronistic today - the wisecracking broad with a swagger in her step and a hip flask in her pocket. McAndrew never seems quite comfortable in the role. It is as if she is stepping into a dress once worn by her grandmother. She pulls here and tugs there, but she can never quite get it to fit.
Alexander Dodge's minimalist set is simple and effective, and Anita Yavich has designed lovely dresses for the four women. I did wonder, though, why they wore the same outfit to work every day for nine years.
"These Shining Lives" is running at Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., through June 1. Show times are 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 p.m., 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m., 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets cost $10-$60. Call 410-332-0033 or go to www.centerstage.org.
Above: Photo by Bill Geeneny of cast members Emma Joan Roberts, Kate Gleason, Kelly McAndrew and Cheryl Lynn Bowers
