Unraveling stories: 'Hazardous Materials' explores the secrets and relationships buried within one small apartment

Kathaleen Roberts, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
·2 min read

Oct. 31—In 1955, Esther and Lynley form a relationship running afoul of the racial and sexual attitudes of the time.

In 2015, county employees Cassie and Hal, who harbor secrets of their own, inspect a Chicago apartment to try to determine the identity of the hoarder "Jane Doe" who recently died there. In scenes that alternate between the two eras, the history of the apartment and its occupants slowly emerges from decades of buried trash.

The Vortex Theatre is staging playwright Beth Kander's "Hazardous Materials" beginning on Friday, Nov. 3. The show runs Thursday-Sunday through Nov. 19.

The play explores a tangle of issues: homophobia, racism, the Holocaust, hoarding and ageism.

"In 1955, it's an open, lovely place," said co-director Lauren Trujillo. "In 2015, it's a hoarding situation."

Trujillo and her sister Taylor (the play's co-director) first saw "Hazardous Materials" at the Headwaters New Play Festival in Creede, Colorado. It won the 2020 Henry Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical by the Colorado Theater Guild.

Esther is a Jewish woman who has fled the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia. Her husband was an American soldier who died fighting in World War II; the rest of her family died in concentration camps. Lynley is a Black woman who escaped Jim Crow Alabama. Her husband was an American soldier who died in the 1944 Port Chicago munitions disaster.

Flash forward to 2015: Hal is new to the job, new to being divorced, feeling very wronged and thereby losing his grasp on right and wrong. Cassie is a working class Chicagoan, recovering alcoholic, former military with a gruff exterior encasing a kind heart.

"This play reflects that we're not just the calamities of our dark times, but also the brightest," said Lauren Trujillo.

In alternating scenes, a mystery gets underway and two stories unfold within the same walls: As Hal and Cassie pick through the physical wreckage of a stranger's life while dealing with their own emotional refuse, Lynley and Esther forge a surprising alliance. With each object or truth unearthed or ignored in each era, one small apartment unfurls as home to timeless human longing.