Theater review: This World in a Woman's Hands
Robert Hurwitt
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The San Francisco Chronicle

Women manned the lines when the Richmond shipyards were building a record-setting 747 ships during World War II. Then the war ended, most of the jobs were gone and those remaining were given to the returning troops.

The story of one such all-female work crew animates parts of Marcus Gardley's This World in a Woman's Hands, a Shotgun Players world premiere that opened Saturday at Ashby Stage. Traditional spirituals and lovely original swing songs by Molly Holm add emotional heft as well as period ambience.

But too often the play idles while the mostly lyric-less songs enhance a mood without advancing the action. Gardley and director Aaron Davidman, who've been developing World for three years, have a great story to tell but perhaps more material than they know what to do with.

World takes us beyond standard Rosie the Riveter lore to depict the degree to which the shipyard crews were made up of African American and other minority women. Racial tensions and pay inequities, a union drive and the horrendous 1944 Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot explosion play their parts. As if that weren't enough - and it is - Gardley drags in Richmond's Wisdom Tree and the murder toll in its Iron Triangle today.

The very capable Margo Hall anchors the story as Gloria, a new arrival from Louisiana whose dreams of becoming a riveter and sending for her daughter run into conflict with the company's schemes to break the new union. Hall lends the role considerable emotional depth, despite having to stay in one underwritten intransigent mode too long in the first act and switch between her younger self and the older Gloria today in the second.

Dena Martinez adds flashes of light as the García Lorca-quoting Maria, embellishing the love letters received by Beth Wilmurt's blithely two-timing Helena. Gwen Loeb's no-nonsense foreman and Liz T. Rogers-Beckley's justly embittered Sapphire help establish the reality of the shipyard within the wraparound scaffolding of Lisa Clark's set.

There's some very strong material in the ensemble scenes, particularly when Loeb has to fire her crew. The fine singing is beautifully supported by Marcus Shelby's eloquent bass. But Gardley's World too often seems underwritten and unfocused. The way he treats that Wisdom Tree had even this lifelong tree-hugger wishing for a chainsaw.