photo credit: Francis Gacad

Written by Patrick Chavis

Curtis Theatre & Begins and Ends with ‘A’ presents: These Shining Lives, playing now at the Curtis Theatre June 13 – 22, 2025.

A mesmerizing and emotionally grounded production of Melanie Marnich ‘s These Shining Lives, with an ensemble and visual storytelling as moving as the true story it is based on.   

These Shining Lives is the real-life story of four young women: Catherine Donohue (Emma Laird), the new girl at the watch factory, who has the perfect husband, Tom (played by Spike Pulice). Tom works in construction on beams. The next woman in the lineup is Frances (Shelby Perlis), the grounded, religious, and motherly one of the group; Pearl (Magan Tran), the joker and light-hearted one; and lastly, the rough-around-the-edges but queen bee of the group, Charlotte (Genevieve Kauper).

Story/Set/Costume Design:

These ladies work at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, a gig that paid $8 a day if they worked fast enough in the 1920s. It’s not much by today’s standards, but in the 1920s, it was almost unheard of for women to make that amount. 

As the new girl, Catherine deals with her new co-workers, children, and a husband not used to having a working wife. Oh no, she is starting to turn green—this and more in These Shining Lives.

What this play does really well and accentuates with the vision from director Amanda Hallman is building this sizable world around the characters that’s almost too perfect. Right? That is precisely what you want with the first half of this show. The scenic design from Collin Lawrence, in combination with this creative projection design from Jonathon Infante, who created various fonts of text, cityscapes with texture, and the pièce de résistance, the moving waves at the front of the stage, that tonally and symbolically blew my mind.

blew my mind!

And you think it’s over, and then boom, there’s more, as the background opens up with this beach horizon with what looks like dunes of sand.

With this almost perfect world and situation set up, the second-half revelations hit harder.

While not a plot hole by any means, Pearl and Frances are underwritten in this piece and relegated to light comic relief and the voice of reason. I wish these characters were more fleshed out, but I also understand the focus is definitely more on Catherine and even Charlotte, who has a more prominent role in this than Pearl and Frances. The sparkling green effect used in this show is understood, but only mildly effective. 

The costume pieces from Aja Bell are varied and beautiful, with various tasteful patterns and designs.

Acting:

Having very young actresses- or at least they look pretty young- was an excellent casting choice, as the real radium workers were also young, some of them in their teens. The dialect used is also very old-timey. It was like a callback to an old black-and-white film—great voice acting from these actors. I could especially hear it in performances from Genevieve Kauper, who was astonishing in this piece. Spike Pulice also changes his voice distinctively as Tom, going for more of an Average Joe persona and pulling it off quite swimmingly. 

An immensely tense and powerful confrontational scene between Pulice & Brian Fichtner (Mr. Reed) near the show’s back end. Fichtner and Pulice’s reactions look authentic: panic, fear, and remorse from Fichtner and the anger and frustration from Pulice, all there if you looked close enough.

The lighting in this from Heather Hareless was gorgeous, as if it were a paintbrush on the stage—the use of light and simultaneous action. Even while the main action of the scene was going on, silhouetted in darkness and light purples, blues, and reds, the other actors continued to work on their watches as if still on the line. This active motion, even when not the primary focus, was a unique touch.

I stand by what I said about these two characters being underwritten; however, Shelby Perlis and Magan Tran pull out some of the best qualities from these characters.

Laird navigates multiple shifts throughout the play, yet her performance remains anchored in catherine’s character. despite the heightened stakes, laird never loses her timid but determinded spirit as the drama escalates. through the performance, you can see not only hear that courage doesn’t always look brave.

Review

9.4 Overall

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Story10

Acting9

Set & Design10

Costumes9.2

Entertainment9

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• Story
• Acting
• Set & Design
• Costumes
• Entertainment

 Exceptional Show! OCR Recommended! 

Extra note: Crispy and clear sound, effects, and quality fidelity from what sounded like a mic’d actors, courtesy of Sound Designer Kristofer Kataoka.