Social work is probably the most valuable but least valued occupation in the country. The only other profession that could lay equal claim to that unfortunate designation is public school teaching. Social workers care for those people who have no one else to care for them, those who have slipped through the cracks of the woefully inadequate criminal justice and mental health systems, and those who just need a little extra help to get through the day. For their efforts, social workers enjoy a pittance, unmanageable caseloads, and the pleasures of navigating complex and fucked up bureaucracies.
Countless stories and studies describe high burnout rates among social workers due to stressful and restrictive workplace situations, and yet many persist in the field because they don't want to abandon people who everyone else has already abandoned. Rebecca Gilman's Luna Gale, now running at the Rep, drops you into this world full of halogen lights, chaos, well-meaning but fucking awful christians, and misguided but ultimately sympathetic drug users.
Social workers aren't saints—and Gilman's play certainly doesn't suggest as much, either—but the social workers I know and admire do display a set of rare character traits that are difficult to describe; it's some combination of monk-like patience, instant trustworthiness, a strong and particular sense of humor, and uhhh...what's that thing that seems to be lacking in every political discussion—OH YEAH—genuine compassion. Pamela Reed perfectly expresses that mixture of qualities in her portrayal of Caroline, the social worker tasked with the case at the center of the play.
Basically: Karlie (played with much pluck and vigor by Hannah Mootz) and Peter (played with adorably dopey pathos by Drew Highlands) have a baby, the titular Luna Gale, but they also have a meth problem. Cindy (played well by Anne Allgood), Karlie's mother, wants to get custody of the baby, but she's also a "crazy christian" who may or may not have properly owned up to a particularly awful moment in her parenting past.
The main tension is this: Is the baby in better hands with meth heads who could potentially hurt the child in the near future, or with very evangelical christians who will give the child a cozy room but who will most certainly fuck up the child in the long term? Caroline—while also trying to work on other cases—has to work both sides of that equation, plus deal with hyper-christian management hell-bent on making her department more "efficient." A moment of real rage bubbled up within me when Caroline's supervisor, Cliff (played plainly by Alex Matthews), accused her of harboring an anti-Christian bias, and I wasn't alone.
Though the performances in the play are solid, especially in Reed's and Mootz's case, scenic designer Michael Ganio's set and his use of the Rep's Jamiroquai fly system are the stars of the show.
Sets slide offstage as if on conveyor belts. Cindy's homey kitchen morphs into a greyscale Department of Health and Services waiting room and then morphs into a courtroom lounge complete with goofy vending machines, reflecting the way days blur together for those who don't have the luxury of leaving work at the office. The grid of the DHS building's ceiling tiles and the mind-numbing glow of the double halogen bulbs bind all the sets together and serve as a constant reminder of a system so rigid that it's bound to break.
