"RADIUM GIRLS"A
DISTURBING LEGACY
Look at your wristwatch. Does it have any
luminous paint on it? Is the watchcase make of lead? Maybe it should be.
The fact is, even today, nobody
knows what the “safe limit” is for radiation exposure. In truth, there probably
is no such thing as a safe limit, since all radium poisoning keeps building up
in every body for one’s entire lifetime.
But because the fatal effects of
radium poisoning can take decades to become known, people generally shrug off
the danger. There are, after all, so many more things that can kill you so much
quicker.
Which brings us to the
knuckle-grinding “Radium Girls” political play written by Washington DC
playwright D.W. Gregory.
Going where no Tucson stage
company has gone before, Beowulf Alley Theatre Company brings out the shameful
truth about corporate America’s history for creating a safe place for uranium
workers.
Sheldon Metz has directed a cast
of nine, most playing multiple roles, to recount the history of the Radium
Girls, a New Jersey group of young factory workers in the early 1920s whose
lives had no value to their employer, the U.S. Radium Corporation. The
company’s business was painting watch dials and other instruments with radium
paint. It was the Radium Girls who did the painting.
Basically, U. S. Radium knew its
watch-dial painting operation wasn’t safe, but always downplayed the danger.
The play’s relevance for today is
that this business strategy hasn’t changed. A string of documentary films keep
telling us how giant corporations continue pumping processed food full of
chemicals with complicated names that some scientists have declared to be safe.
There were scientists in the
1920s happy to declare radium was safe to work with, too, if certain procedures
were applied. Of course that was completely false.
The sad saga of these Radium
Girls is fully documented. They have their own Wikipedia page, too. Actually, a
little online research before seeing “Radium Girls” is highly recommended.
Much of the dialogue is based on
direct testimony that is a matter of public record.
Gregory the playwright has
structured her play more like a documentary film, as a string of scenes that
generate talking points to move the story along. This makes it difficult to
personally identify with any of the innocent victims, but Metz does what he can
to dramatize each of the conflicts.
Nicole M. Scott plays Grace
Fryer, the radium worker who suffered terribly from radium poisoning and led
the lawsuit for safer working conditions.
Bree Boyd-Martin plays Katherine
Wiley, the lawyer whose determination kept the suit from being buried under
legal technicalities raised by U.S. Radium.
To be reminded of this pivotal
piece of workplace history will make us all better citizens. To see how little
has changed in the business world’s eagerness to value profits more than the
welfare of its workers will make us all better citizens, too.
“Radium Girls” continues in performances
through April 8 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, at
Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave. All tickets are $20, with discounts for
online purchases. For details and reservations, 882-0555, or visit www.beowulfalley.org
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