Hazardous Materials at Perisphere Theater
Beth Kander’s play opens in present century Chicago, circa 2015, when the death of an elderly hoarder brings two county employees, Cassie and Hal, to her (rent-free) apartment to help verify her actual identity. As the employees search through documents and belongings to find clues to her identity, the play offers flashbacks to 1955, where we meet two war widows: Esther, the Jewish inhabitant of the once-pristine apartment and Lynley, her Black neighbor from Alabama,
