In the 1920s and ’30s, women at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, were hired to paint the faces and hands of watches with a special chemical mixture – a little gimmick to make the watch faces glow. Those radioactive materials eventually killed many of the employees.

This true story provides the backdrop for These Shining Lives, currently receiving its Midwest premiere by the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble. Eight Forty-Eight’s shiny happy dueling critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman have a review.