Village Players presents These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich.
A group of courageous women confront the toxic health hazards of working for the Radium Dial Company in the 1920s.
Based on a true story, the play chronicles the life of Catherine Donahue as she lands a job painting the hour markings on watch faces using a radium compound that glows in the dark. Theirs is a story of survival in its most transcendent sense, as Catherine and her fellow workers refuse to allow the company that stole their health to kill their spirits — or endanger the lives of those who come after them.
“To sit and listen to the stories of these incredible women — to absorb them right into your very bones — evokes the raw emotion and provokes the deep thought that demanded change in their day, and continues to inspire today.” Kingston Whig-Standard
Running February 27 to March 21, 2026
2190E Bloor Street West, steps from the Runnymede Station
416-767-7702 villageplayers.net
Meredith Mullen as Catharine Donohue
Gavin Magrath as Mr. Reed
Andrea Constantine as Frances O’Connell
Hanna Savchuk as Pearl Payne
Erik Bracciodieta as Tom Donohue
Melly Magrath as Charlotte Purcell
Directed by Anne Harper
Extraordinary theatre in the heart of Bloor West Village
