Luna Gale
Opening Night: January 18, 2014
Closing: February 23, 2014
Theater: Goodman Theatre
Caroline, a veteran social worker, thinks she has a typical case on her hands when she meets Peter and Karlie, two teenaged drug addicts accused of neglecting their baby (Luna Gale). But when she places their infant daughter in the care of Karlie’s mother, Caroline sparks a family conflict that exposes a shadowy, secretive past—and forces her to make a risky decision with potentially life-altering consequences. Powerful and arresting, Luna Gale is an unforgettable tale of faith and forgiveness.
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January 27, 2014
"Tragedy," the critic Eric Bentley once wrote, "is an experience of chaos." True. But not only is the chaotic the landscape of Hamlet, Othello and the like, it also visits many of us on a daily basis. A waiter finds himself in the weeds. A reporter collapses under too many deadlines. An accountant finds herself buried. And a social worker, like the harried figure at the center of playwright Rebecca Gilman’s excellent and intensely involving new drama Luna Gale, finds herself wanting to do the best possible thing for the vulnerable children in her charge, but the kids just keep coming, one case after another, one more appointment to chase, one more open file to add to the pile, one more reason for a career-building, know-nothing boss to get in her face.
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January 30, 2014
As with her hit debut drama Spinning Into Butter (1999), Rebecca Gilman’s newest agitation Luna Gale, directed by Robert Falls at Goodman Theatre, puts the versatile Mary Beth Fisher in the hot seat. Instead of playing a university dean coming to terms with her own racism, Fisher now depicts another authority figure caught in the crossfire: Already plagued with too many clients and too few resolutions in her child care cases, beleaguered social worker Caroline is a single woman who finds herself caught up in a custody battle with no easy outcome. She’s also battling her own demons as she faces the Solomonic choice of who is best to raise a child who probably used up her good luck the moment she was born.
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 27, 2014
Each time a headline appears about the death of a brutally abused child, or the removal of badly neglected children by some state Department of Children and Family Services, a slew of questions and recriminations follow. How could the caseworkers have missed what was going on, and why didn’t they take instant protective action? Why didn’t neighbors, relatives, teachers and others spot the problem and report it? Along with those questions comes the finger-pointing and the despair, the familiar talk about budget cuts, limited staff, overburdened rehab programs, troubled foster care situations, overwhelmed social workers, the primacy of the biological family and all the rest.
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 29, 2014
We don’t usually think of social workers as having a great deal of power—"overworked" and "underpaid" are often the first words that spring to mind. But in the system known as child protective services, the opinions and observations of these harried civil servants carry more weight than anyone’s in determining whether parents should be separated from their children. The possibilities for mistakes, blind spots, and biases are numerous, the consequences far-reaching and potentially devastating. The thorny dilemmas raised by investing a mortal with the power to decide fates are the subject of Rebecca Gilman’s gripping new play, Luna Gale, now onstage at Goodman Theatre under the efficient direction of Robert Falls (this is the fourth Gilman script he’s staged).
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February 10, 2014
CHICAGO — The sobering themes of Luna Gale, the new play by Rebecca Gilman having its premiere at the Goodman Theater here, have a sad, strange currency. Ms. Gilman’s drama, about a fight over the fate of a baby in jeopardy, concerns itself with two pathologies that have been much in the news: sexual abuse within a family and the corrosive effects of drug addiction. (I probably don’t need to explain why those problems have been screaming from the headlines lately.)
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