Entertainment :: Theatre
The Hothouse by Jim Rutter
EDGE ContributorMonday Sep 22, 2008 Stop any Philadelphian on the street and ask what comes to mind when they think of an incompetent, bumbling head bureaucrat and his slyly belligerent right-hand man. Most likely they’ll say the current administration in Washington.
Unless, of course, they’ve already seen Harold Pinter’s darkly comic The Hothouse as driven by a superb cast in the Lantern Theatre’s fascinating production.
While Pinter only takes potshots at the political class in his play, by setting the action in an unnamed government run sanitarium for the mentally troubled, he targets the insanity of any bureaucratic structure. Kathryn MacMillan’s direction makes it clear that, just as with the Washington bureaucracy, the inmates are running the asylum.
Gibbs (Pete Pryor), the institution’s number two man, files a disturbing report with his superior Roote (Paul Nolan): one of the patient’s has been murdered; another, impregnated through rape by a staff member, has just given birth. Roote is not concerned with the people involved, only that he’s spent "years and years trying to perfect the working of an institution," and now this happens, with no precedent to suggest what to do next.
Since the asylum’s rules require that every patient goes by a number and Roote can’t remember any of them, he sets the more competent Gibbs to interview the remaining staff to find out who killed 6457, and who raped 6459. When Gibbs asks "What to do about the baby?", Roote fires back exasperatedly, "Well get rid of it!"
Other that this interruption in the routine, the staff, Gibbs included, spend its time drinking on the job, sabotaging interpersonal relationships, carrying on affairs, and torturing tfellow co-workers with psychological experiments. Gibbs spits in the coffee cups, and as the only innocent left on the staff, the simple-minded Lamb (Mike Dees) confesses to Ms. Cutts (Kristyn Chouiniere) that, "I haven’t quite got used to this place," just moments before she attaches electrodes to his wrist and takes sensual pleasure in electrocuting him.
Did I mention that the whole play takes place on Christmas?
While it sounds creepy and dark (it is), outside of the Lantern’s production of his play "Betrayal" several years ago, "The Hothouse" marks the most enjoyable work by Pinter I’ve seen on stage. Pinter’s script teems with the malice that boils beneath the pleasantries of human relationships, and the cast members captures every ounce of it in their performances.
Every line offers an occasion to politely sabotage the efforts of a co-worker, and each conversation perfects the art of passive-aggression. Lush (Luigi Sottile) backhandedly flatters Roote, and Pryor blankly smiles while displaying the very image of subdued malice kept at bay by an underhanded scheme to seize power at an opportune moment.
It’s all so intentionally over the top that it’s also the funniest Pinter I’ve ever seen. Pinter’s play forces the audience to confront the horror of a bureaucracy at the same time offering a seductive out by letting us laugh at what should properly terrify.
Paul Nolan, aided by Pete Pryor as his straight man, delivers a superior performance. Initially bumbling through his job duties as the classic incompetent administrator, he modulates his tone through long monologues in which he veers wildly from exasperation to effrontery, his entire performance culminating in a terrifying, guilt-laden "Christmas Message to the Staff." Full of platitudes, Nolan delivers it in a voice that combines the mania of Hitler with the barely suppressed panic of a frightened FEMA official trying to stay calm while telling everyone to flee the city.
As the object of the entire staff’s lust, Chouiniere plays her role with an eerie mixture of menace and flirtatiousness. Moving awkwardly across the stage, turning her head to level a creepy sideways glance, she’s both sensual and frightening, seducing men by scaring the pants off them.
MacMillan deserves a great deal of credit for her straightforward interpretation of this play -- using Janet Embree’s lighting and Christopher Colucci’s sound design (think groaning pipes and the inmate’s howls of agony) to punctuate Pinter’s script. She only stumbles in the transition to the play’s ending, which, while I won’t spoil it here, ends in an atrocity that by over-emphasizing the humor left me unprepared.
Performances through October 12 at St. Stephen’s Theatre, 10th and Ludlow St. Philadelphia. Tickets and information available at www.lanterntheater.org
I’m a former university philosophy lecturer, trained in economics and philosophy. Now I devote most of my free time to pursuing my interests in theater and opera, writing plays and criticism; while still researching and writing in the field of political economy. Currently, and for the past five years, I have competed in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. I live in Center City Philadelphia, where I take in every production or performance that my schedule allows.
I do have a website: http://jimruttersreviews.blogspot.com
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