The Hothouse is a political statement of Pinter’s stance against formal institutions.

The understaff, consisting of the kitchen staff, the portering staff, and the cleaning staff, are symbolic of a concentrated working class rebellion within the plot of the Hothouse.

We do not see any of the understaff except for their leader, Tubb, who is the link from them to the executive personnel.

The understaff brutally murder all of the members of the executive branch of the institution.

This bloody revolution is symbolic of Pinter’s rebellious view of formalized institutions and corrupt government.

Not that there are any of these birds in the institution so sadistically mismanaged by Archibald Roote – although Miss Cutts, who likes getting her hands round people’s necks, might be thought of as resembling one, as might some of the other employees, including the brutal and alcoholic Roote himself; patient 6457 has been cut down in his prime, and there is a new-born baby whose life will probably be nipped in the bud.

Any bureaucratic institution is a sort of hothouse, filled with strange and often disgusting growths, and  Roote’s ‘rest home’, whose patients are ostensibly mental cases but seem really to be people who fallen foul of the mysterious ‘Ministry’, is no exception. There is Roote himself, whose senses seem to run through the building (he can ‘hear a whisper in the basement’). There is the aptly named Lush, spreading himself everywhere, Gibbs padding about like a cat (‘gib’ is a name for a tom-cat), and Tubb, who uses the Christmas raffle to amass stuff for himself. And then there is the poor little pet Lamb, whose innocence is savagely abused…

He is a character who takes the actor out of his comfort zone – or at least he takes me out of mine. At his heart (as at the heart of forge and kitchen) there is an incandescence which continually erupts; he is consumed with rage, he is cunning, self-pitying, dishonest, insolent, fearful, lecherous (though I suspect he is sexually impotent, and always has been) and a cruel bully. But he loves his youngest son, Joey. The problem for the actor (or at least my problem) is to get away from one’s intellect and its civilised defences, so that this beast, with its rage, can emerge through one’s body and one’s voice. Which brings on another problem: merely ranting is no good; one has, paradoxically, to have more control rather than less for a part like this – which means, among other things doing singer’s exercises for an hour a day (if I have the time) and exploring the physical qualities of the words Pinter gives Max. It also means days of depression when nothing seems to go right, and sometimes whole days and nights of panic… Why the devil did I listen to the blandishments of Walter Roberts, why did I agree to do this, why…?
But as well as being a deeply shocking play (one woman acquaintance of mine had nightmares for two consecutive nights after reading it and woke up screaming), it is a wonderful play, with a wicked humour, an acute sensitivity to patterns of speech and a biting analysis of male misogyny. In the end it is the woman who wins: Joey gets his mother, and Max is left with ashes.

Director’s note:

I first became aware of Harold Pinter’s work back in my University days over 20 years ago when I saw a video of the definitive production of The Homecoming directed by Peter Hall. I have been hooked ever since. Pinter writes dialogue like no one else and had influenced many–David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino to name two. What I love about his dialogue is what lies underneath what is said or in the case of the famous “Pinter pause,” what is not said but very loudly implied. To quote a line from the play, “You’ve never heard such silence”. The Homecoming is not a pleasant play to watch and it can be very difficult to follow. The characters are, without exception, extremely dislikeable, bitter, vicious and violent. It seems like Pinter has taken the worst characteristics of human nature and pushed them ever so slightly into caricature, making the development of the plot and the actions of the characters slide into savage absurdity. If that were so, the play would just be an interesting surrealist experiment but in actuality it is firmly moored in realism. The difference is that the characters in The Homecoming vocalise and act out the worst attitudes and characteristics of human nature that are normally suppressed or not communicated. There is nothing in the play, no matter how vile and extreme, that is not true to how people think and behave–or at least how Pinter believes they would behave if they gave vent to their baser impulses. Does any of this sound familiar?

Why I found this role difficult is because it is a semi-important part that stresses the severity of the situation these salesmen are in. Someone robbed the office, and they are all suspects, and not only are they suspects of a crime, but they still have to perform so they don’t get fired. What does that have to do with me? Well, I don’t have a monologue or speeches. I just have a handful of sentences, and all I do is call people’s names.

Baylen is required to be directing the actors on stage, and successfully interject and diffuse the situations that are running off on tangents, while standing his ground and bringing a sense of respect to the characters involved. In my point of view that’s hard to do when you don’t have that monologue to beat someone down with, or express yourself. Yelling all your lines to get the respect is definitely not the option for this role. So the director came up with an interrogation exercise to help me sound more like he imagined this cop to be, instead of just the guy walking in and out saying his lines.

The Interrogation

This was the most entertaining part of rehearsals for me thus far. The director brought in all the actors to sit in while I perform my interrogation. We were all in character; they sat in a chair and I drilled them for the answers to find who had robbed the office.

This was by far the best way I could get into this role. I have to be the jerk cop. The guys all walk out of the office angry as hell, so I had to be humiliating, assertive, and, yes, yell a bit as well. The point is, I had to do it over and over and over, and they had to tell the director, “Nah, he’s too nice, or to respectful, etc etc.” And it wouldn’t stop until they told the director, yeah, he was an ass. To where I even surprised myself with some of the comments or humiliation tactics that just popped into my head after doing it for a little while. If anything I learned that doing an off-book behind the scenes type of role-play isn’t as silly as I had once thought it would be. It drove a point home, to the character and to me.

Do it again! Until I got more questions. And more answers, and every time we were done, I’d be asked. “Did he do it?” And that’s yet another hard part, especially when you know who had done it.

I never thought Baylen would be an interesting character, but definitely after this type of character building, I had a whole new look of what Baylen should be.

Now, I just have to remember my damned lines!

First, you choose the objective of the play. The objective is the action summary, the thesis or the super-task such as to explore immorality within a capitalist society or, for example, ‘To show the competitiveness of men in a working environment’. Then you choose the main objective of each character. This is the thing the character really wants and can be expressed by using the infinitive of a transitive verb – i.e. ‘I want to convince my boss that I am his best employee’ or ‘I wish to trick him into giving me all his money.’

Once decided, the play is broken down into units and bits to find the characters’ secondary and minor objectives in each section of the play. Then, if necessary, you choose dramatic actions for every line of the text, for example – to manipulate, to torment, to ridicule.

This process may seem overly detailed, time-consuming and overlooking the actor’s instinct but this is the basic way we have worked in our attempt to stage the play. It has been difficult to pinpoint exactly what these characters want when most of what they say is false and misleading. At times it has felt like a game of trial and error, but the search for appropriate objectives has given the play and characters a real direction.

Chris Parham
Director
Black Stripe Theater

News about forthcoming shows will be included shortly, so please stop by again soon!