Review of Luna Gale, on stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

[img]2901|exact|||no_popup[/img]L-R: Mary Beth Fisher, Colin Sphar and Reyna de Courcy in “Luna Gale.” Photo by Craig Schwartz.

Cynicism is an easy currency to trade in, especially when the subject is the government and its initiatives – and popular entertainment is a large marketplace. Consider child protective services and related efforts to help distressed children; how often is the social worker positioned relative to families as the internal affairs investigator is to the police? In Luna Gale, playwright Rebecca Gilman wisely resists the impulse to be cynical without resorting to romanticism. Her depiction of a social worker’s efforts on behalf of the titular baby is poignant, yes, but also direct and (mostly) free of the histrionics that feed melodramas. The gritty impression that emerges is of the well-intended worker struggling on multiple fronts – dysfunctional families, tragic circumstances, bureaucracy and organizational politics – while barely maintaining a stable orbit around the black hole of human fallibility.

Enabled by Robert Falls’ efficient direction, an ingenious revolving set design by Todd Rosenthal, and a hearty cast (many of whom hail from the original Goodman Theatre production), the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s latest production presents the case of a baby whose drug-addicted parents are not fit to care for her. There is no clear and distinct enemy in the scenario, no single supervillain to serve as the linchpin whose toppling would suddenly clear away the troubles. The baby’s parents, Cindy and Peter, are enslaved to a meth addiction, but are good-hearted. Cindy’s mother Karlie, and Luna’s provisional caretaker, teeters on the edge of religious fanaticism. Yet, she has a kindly disposition and provides a stable home in which to raise a baby. Caroline is at the point of exhaustion after decades of dealing with case after hard-knock case, while her younger boss Cliff is gripped by professional ambition. Both, though, are nevertheless committed to the welfare of children in their care.

If anything, Luna Gale highlights the quality of interconnectedness of our human lives. Indirectly, it serves as an argument against the atomistic approach that insists on reducing challenges to isolated problems. The argument is best represented in a key scene when Cindy, intent on doing what’s best for baby Luna, baffles Caroline by initiating an action that essentially abandons all hope towards her own daughter. Here is a litmus test that arises for the rest of us, then: Is the drug addict to be condemned and ostracized, or compassionately guided towards recovery, no matter the resistance?

It’s a strong, compelling, dramatic piece of theatre that puts a human face on a problem all-too-easily conceived in terms of media sound bites, statistics and abstract legal reasoning.  While the play is fairly lean at two hours in length, Luna Gale does come with ornamentation whose efforts might have been more productively turned elsewhere. The first is Karlie’s characterization as an evangelical Christian, whose excessive religiosity masks deeper troubles. I’m not at all opposed to puncturing evangelical hypocrisy and the insufferable compulsion towards frequent proclamations of faith. But here it feels like a shortcut, a lazy way to inject a mildly antagonistic force into the drama when there already are dramatic elements in play for nuanced characterizations.

Then there is a concurrent storyline involving Lourdes, a teenager who ages out of the program at the beginning of the play. While interesting as a cautionary example of not taking appearances for granted, this intermittent narrative is just that: interesting. It dramatizes the limits of a social worker’s influence on her charges, especially as they become adults, but the result is an exclamation mark without a preceding sentence. Dramatic, but lacking the richness of context.

It’s enough to suspect that Gilman doesn’t fully trust the core drama of Cindy and Peter’s struggle to reclaim their daughter. Fortunately, Adolf Loos’s admonishment of ornamentation as crime doesn’t apply here. Gilman’s skilled and insightful writing ensures that however ornamental the results of bringing religion and parallel narratives into the production, they aren’t spurious, detracting, or contradictory. It all hangs together rather well, with tensions around the question of baby Luna’s fate leaving us with a strong impression – as it should.

“Luna Gale” by Rebecca Gilman. Directed by Robert Falls. Presented by Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre from November 23 through December 21, 2014. Tickets are available by calling (213) 628-2772 or visiting http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/Luna-Gale/.

Frédérik Sisa is the Page's assistant editor and resident art critic. He can be reached via eMail at fsisa@thefrontpageonline.com, and invites you to connect with him via social media:

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