The Stage
Ben Dowell

7 August 2003

It would be hard to imagine a more relevant new play on the fringe than this, examining as it does love, loyalty and the complex, principle-eroding anxieties of New Labour Britain.

Australian playwright Van Badham ingeniously tantalises her audience with the thought that this could simply be a safe examination of liberal familial tensions as well-meaning academic mother-in-law (Lois Norman) struggles with the arrival of her husband's long-lost son and the fact that her PR-girl daughter has just been injured in an anarchist bomb.

What should the leftish family, which marched for the IRS and yet enjoy saunas in their palatial home, make of all this? Do they close ranks against dark forces - a camarilla, a scheming cabal or clique, has double meaning - or go with their well-meaning instincts about dissent?

The answer does lie within this family but deeper social concerns lurking within the unit literally explode on to the stage with enormous and unexpected power.

Particularly impressive is Caroline O'Kerr as the daughter who has been spoon-fed politics by her unwitting mother and whose vampiric indentity unlocks the play.

A cerebral joy.