BY WENDI REARDON PRICE
Clarkston News Staff Writer
The Clarkston High School Drama Club takes you back to the 1920s as they perform “Radium Girls” by D.W. Gregory at the high school’s Performing Arts Center on Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27 at 7 p.m.
Radium is the miracle cure and Grace Fryer and her friends are dial painters who end up ingesting radium as they had to lick their paintbrushes and the paint mixture included radium. They end up getting sick and taking their case to court.
“The whole show is pretty much one big lawsuit between the radium corporation and the radium girls,” said Lucas Bell. “At the time radium was used as a treatment for cancer so people thought it was a wonder drug. They didn’t think it had negative side effects. They put it in the water.”
“The radium girls are young women who worked in a dial painting factory from a fairly young age,” Lauren Ormsby added.

“It led to a lot of the work labor laws there are today,” Ben Neideck added.
Grace, played by Ormsby, takes part in a case for justice.
“She started working in the factory when she was 15-years-old and leaves when she is 19,” Ormsby explained. “She ends up getting sick from the radium. She watches all of her friends that she worked with get sick. It’s sad.”
She added it is sometimes difficult to become Grace because it’s hard to know what the characters were truly feeling at the time.
At Grace’s side is her fiance, played by Lucas Bell
“He just really wants to have a family. He wants to get a house, have kids but then Grace gets sick,” Bell said. “He loves her so much and sticks by her side and fights for her. It’s easier to get into the character of Tom. Tom’s fun. He is a really sweet guy. He really just wants the best for Grace.”
Bell, like many actors in the show, has more than one role. He also plays a reporter who acts as a narrator to the play and Dr. Knef, a dentist who treats a lot of the girls from the factory who end up with a lot of jaw problems from ingesting the radium.
“He is a very bad guy and looking out for his own interest,” Bell said. “It’s kind of difficult to be him because he is this mean, old dentist and I am this nice boy. He is a really cynical guy.”
Neideck plays Arthur Roeder, Grace’s former employer.
“He is a married man with a family. He works for the radium plant. He manages the operations that go on. Things start to go awry when girls start getting sick. He is making so much money and he doesn’t want to stop,” he explained about his character. “I am still trying to learn about the character. It seems to me he is a good guy with good intentions, but they just didn’t work out the way he wanted them to.”
McKenna Larkin plays two roles for her first time on the stage with the drama club. She plays Mrs. Michaels, a housewife who drinks radium water and thinks it cures everything.
“They thought it was this wonder drug and she believes it,” she said. “It helped her arthritis she is feeling great.”
Larkin also plays Mrs. Wylie, and activist who goes to Grace and finds her a lawyer.
“She is the rock for the girls. She tries to make decisions on what she things is best for them,” she said. ” She is the one to ground everyone to make sure they know what they are fighting for this cause.”
Evan Martin plays three characters – Dr. Von Sochocky, the inventor of the radium paint, Mr. Markley, the lawyer for the radium corporation and a photographer.
“It’s very interesting because they all have different mindsets,” he said. “Dr. Von Sochocky understands the effects are and he feels guilty about it because he invented the paint and had no idea until it was too late. As for Mr. Markley, he understands the effects but he is still trying to make sure the company doesn’t go under.”
Emily Herrmann also plays three characters – a shop girl, a board member, and Harriet, the radium corporation president’s daughter.
“Shop girl is symbol of how society is reacting to the story of the radium girls and their empathy for them,” she explained. “I am board member No. 1 for the radium corporation the girls are suing. What she is doing is trying to get a better image for the corporation so they don’t have to go to court and possibly lose. Harriet, daughter of the president of the radium corporation, she grows up during the duration of the play. She shows time has changed.”
Kaity Dooling plays Mrs. McNeil, a supervisor at the factory, and Mrs. Fryer, Grace’s mom.
“Mrs. McNeil is kind of mean but for good reasons. She cares about the girls but she is hard on them,” she said. “Mrs. Fryer doesn’t want Grace to go to court at all. She is very against what Grace wants. She is very blind to the fact radium is the cause of what all the girls are going through. She is trying to push it away and trying not to think about it. She doesn’t want to deal with it.”
The cast invites the community to come see their performance of “Radium Girls.”
“It’s really eye opening to how society treated women because the men in the plants would get lead screens to protect them from the radiation, but the women wouldn’t get anything,” Bell said.
“It’s an awesome history lesson,” Neideck added. “The work labor laws were so bad back then. They didn’t get looked into as much as they do now.”
“It really is an inspiring show to see these girls having a voice for themselves and using it” Herrmann said. “It’s a very impactful show. It will leave you with chills.”
“If you aren’t up for the history lesson – the cast is amazing,” Larkin said. “It’s a great story, great characters. We have a great director and assistant director.”
For more information, please visit https://sites.google.com/a/clarkston.k12.mi.us/dramaclub or call the box office at 248-623-4024.