Preview: These Shining Lives

I saw it several years ago when a friend directed it and it stuck with me. Mostly it was the friendship between the women as well as the quiet, palpable love between Catherine and her husband Tom that I remembered.  I tend to be drawn to plays about women who don’t think they are strong but somehow find a desire to fight.

Not at all. The Radium Dial Company and others like them had factories all over the USA and probably Canada.  There was another suit in New Jersey around the same time, but they settled out of court. But it was the women in Ottawa, Illinois who kept fighting and were responsible for the laws being changed and big businesses having to take responsibility for their worker’s health and wellbeing.

One of our cast met someone who had known the buyer of the original building in Chicago. Even decades later they had to deal with the radium especially around the window frames as it seems this was where they left the watches to dry.  

Kate Moore, the author of The Radium Girls, a story which “fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium” will be holding a brief Q&A after the performance on 4 July. The book won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Best History, was voted U.S. librarians’ favourite non-fiction book of 2017, and became a New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Oh, the usual when needing to get busy people all in the same room at the same time!  There is so little we can do in this play if anyone is missing because of the flowing style of it.

But also, trying to find the light as well as the dark. I tried to stay away from being melodramatic.  We have had some wonderful discussions about the anger and the emotion it brings up, but we have also laughed an awful lot! 

First of all, Catherine Donohue (Ellena Jones) who was the one chosen on behalf of the Ottawa, Illinois women to actually sue the company, and her husband Tom (Alex Davies). For me they are the heart of the play. In the script, the actor playing Tom is allocated to play other roles as well, but I thought this slightly diluted their relationship, so I’ve added an actor (Gavin Donellan) who plays several roles. 

Then there are the other women, Charlotte (Synne Marie Tansem), Frances (Zahra Jennings Grant) and Pearl (Julia Blyth). In reality these women all stood by Catherine and Tom while they fought their own battles.  We also meet the manager Mr Reed and the women’s lawyer Leonard Grossman (both Randy Brown),  who worked for free and the doctor who finally helps them.  Even minor characters are very loosely based on real people involved in the case.

I hope they come away informed, shocked and angry.  But mostly moved.  

Informative, heartwarming, absorbing.