Prairie View to present 'Radium Girls' Friday, Saturday evenings

Arthur Roeder (Cash Lintner) and his wife, Diane (Cheyenne Moss), argue on what actions to take after they learn that girls at the U.S. Radium Corp. factory are being affected by radiation poisoning. The Prairie View theater department presents the dramatic play "Radiation Girls" this Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7. Curtain time both evenings is 7 p.m. (Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

After a rollicking musical with last semester's "Give My Regards to Broadway," the Prairie View High School's theater department's newest production, "Radium Girls," takes a dramatic turn this Friday and Saturday, March 6–7.

The historical drama is inspired by the real-life story of the women who worked for the U.S. Radium Corp. in Orange, New Jersey, and the landmark legal cases that followed. The company hired young women to use radium-based luminous paint to mark dials on watches.

Set in the mid-1920s, the play follows dial-painter Grace Fryer as she battles her former employer, Arthur Roeder after several young women become sick and one dies. Roeder and other company offficials deny the link between radium and the mysterious illnesses plaguing the women.

•