The Hothouse - Softcover

Pinter, Harold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802136435 ISBN 13: 9780802136435

Publisher: Grove Press, 1999

Synopsis

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 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

About this title

About the Author:

Harold Pinter is the author of such seminal modern dramas as The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming. He is married to Lady Antonia Fraser.

Review:

"The Hothouse fuses tragedy and farce, terror and nonsense in a unique mix that is sometimes chilling, sometimes bewildering, yet always, at every moment, fiercely alive and vital." -- Elliot Norton, Boston Herald American

"The Hothouse is Pinter's funniest play." -- Ed Kalem, Time

"Characteristically cryptic and very funny, just what Kafka might have come up with." -- Carolyn Clay, The Boston Phoenix

"The playwright has an unfailing ear for institutionalized doublespeak, and The Hothouse is full of rapid-fire bits that sound like old vaudeville routines as they might have been rewritten by Ionesco." -- Frank Rich, The New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0802136435
• ISBN 13: 9780802136435
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176