Camden New Journal
Robert McCrae

9 October 2003

Camarilla can be translated as both a small room and a clique that seeks power through intrigue. Where the former might describe the venue, it's the latter that is recalled in this story, which begins with a bomb and finishes with disorder of an entirely different kind.

To a backdrop that mirrors the recent events in America, a terrorist device explodes in a London street and leaves a mother and daughter wounded in the debris.

The mother's bloodied picture makes all the newspapers, causing a strain on her personal life, so the last thing she needs is for her husband's estranged son David to visit and work his unctuous charm on hr recovering daughter Rebekah. Stepbrotherly seduction is encouraged in every way by radical thinking Rebekah, who then seeks to defy her mother's staunch views in an even more shocking manner.

Uncertainty endeavours to suture this story together and it's hard to decide whether the message focuses on the devastating impact of the bomb or the family's internecine struggle, or both, or neither. The script lacks the emphasis to give it any perceivable structure. There's even a scene where two characters strip to their underwear that's, even to the most lecherous eye, entirely superfluous. All credit must go to the actors for continuing with their duties with commendable po faces.

The acting is, in the main, excellent, and particular mention must go to Lois Norman as the intellectual mother, and Caroline O'Kerr, as the daughter, keeps her cool while falling for David's inverse charisma. In such an intimate venue the rawness of the acting tends to show the script up for being merely worthy, rather than as incendiary as such subject matter should demand. The conclusion was shocking, but not enough to shake the haze that had irreversibly settled.