Playwright: Rebecca Gilman. At: Goodman Theatre, 140 N. Dearborn St. Tickets: 1-312-443-3800; www.GoodmanTheatre.org/Luna; $25-$81. Runs through: Feb. 23
Luna Gale is the first hit of 2014. Playwright Rebecca Gilman stepped out of her comfort zone several years ago with A True History of the Johnstown Flood, an ambitious historical pageant which wasn't entirely successful, but she's firmly back in the saddle with this world premiere. For her fourth collaboration with director Robert Falls, Gilman returns to the model of her earlier Goodman successes, Spinning Into Butter and Boy Gets Girl, which I call situation drama.
As in typical situation comedy, situation drama is slice-of-life realism with vivid characters drawn in bold words and actions. They are color-bloc characters, quickly familiar and therefore easily believable even though they often represent points-of-view rather than fully-fleshed individuals. In "situation" plays, the characters serve the story and not the other way around, and so it is with Luna Gale. With its crisp, taught structure and rapidly-rising conflict, Luna Gale may be Gilman's most technically-assured work, told with wit and twists.
As with her previous successes, Luna Gale tackles a social issue, with newborn baby Luna at the center, although we never see her. Instead, the story focuses on Caroline ( Mary Beth Fisher ), a veteran family-services case worker in Iowa, who separates Luna from her meth-addicted young parents ( Reyna de Courcy and Colin Sphar ), and assigns custody to her grandmother ( Jordan Baker ). The baby poop hits the fan when long-simmering disagreements between grannie and her daughter emerge, and grannie sues for permanent custody of Luna, supported by her pastor ( Richard Thieriot ). In the primary subplot, Caroline is in conflict with her boss ( Erik Hellman ), who supports granny's agenda because both are born-again Christians. Their conflict pushes Caroline and her boss into an ethical and legal swamp, which is vintage Gilman. The play's emotional center is the value or power of Caroline's intuition and "gut instinct" in determining what's best for baby, vs. "the system" and books of regulations. The welfare bureaucracy is no better than those interpreting it, and those interpreting it are imperfect and often-conflicted individuals just like us, Gilman sharply reminds us.
Under Falls' direction, Luna Gale simply crackles with exciting performances from all while Falls himself—eschewing high concept and overt showmanship—skillfully disappears into the characters and story. Even the smaller roles carry sincerity and weight, Thieriot's soft-spoken but steely pastor and Melissa DuPrey insecure young adult "graduate" of foster care.
Luna Gale may cause some to accuse Gilman of being anti-Christian, but that's not at all what it's about. Gilman may not approve of the "Here-Comes-The-Rapture" Christianity she portrays, but many other value systems or philosophies could be inserted instead without changing the basic conflicts and premises of the play, and that's the real test.
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