The Hothouse
by Harold Pinter
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A black comedy set in a government-run mental institution, The Hothouse revolves around a sinister murder plot hatched against a backdrop of corruption, sexual favors, and hopeless bureaucratic ineptitude. Beneath the surface comedy there are frightening implications concerning a bureaucracy ostensibly dedicated to humanitarian concerns, but where people are referred to by numbers and forgotten as easily as troublesome figures on a balance sheet. Written in 1958, The Hothouse was first show more performed at London's Hampstead Theatre in April 1980, in a production directed by Pinter himself. "A blistering funny play. . . . Hothouse is wild, impudent, fiercely funny."-Jack Kroll, Newsweek show lessTags
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An asylum drama that almost forgets to populate its world with patients, from one of Britain's preeminent playwrights. Written at the very beginning of Pinter's career, and then shelved until he decided to stage it virtually unchanged two decades later, this play partakes in the long tradition of linking the structures of institutionalized mental health treatment with the conventions of farce. Apart from some looming, haunted-house presences, we see nothing of the patients, and the drama dwells instead on the ludicrous, power-mad, and barely sane conversational struggles of the "rest home's" staff. This is careerism as torture.
Cross-posted from my blog: http://sycoraxpine.blogspot.com/2008/03/13-hothouse-by-harold-pinter.html
Cross-posted from my blog: http://sycoraxpine.blogspot.com/2008/03/13-hothouse-by-harold-pinter.html
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254+ Works 9,368 Members
English playwright, poet, and political activist Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in London's East End. From childhood he was interested in literature and acting. He studied at both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama. Pinter was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of show more the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. Pinter published his first poems in 1950. He worked as a bit-part actor in a BBC Radio program and also toured with a Shakespearean troupe. Pinter has written over 30 plays, achieving great success internationally. He has also directed several of his dramas. Pinter was married to actress Vivien Merchant from 1956 to 1980, before wedding biographer Lady Antonia Fraser. From his first marriage he has a son who is a writer and musician. Pinter has won numerous prestigious literary prizes in poetry and theatre. He was awarded the Hermann Kesten Medallion for outstanding commitment on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers. He has been granted honorary degrees at universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, and Greece. In 2005, Pinter received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died from cancer on December 24, 2008 at the age of 78. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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