Philadelphia Weekly

No local company enjoyed a finer 2007-'08 season than the Lantern Theater Company, which continues its winning ways with director Kathryn MacMillan's feverish production of Harold Pinter's The Hothouse.

Originally penned in 1958 in the midst of the Cold War, the unproduced play was shelved by Pinter until 1980 when, after a few judicious cuts, Hothouse finally made its stage debut. Fifty years after its creation Hothouse makes its Philadelphia premiere in a thrilling production that was well worth the wait.

The play opens on Christmas Day in an institution that the staff refers to as a "rest home" but seems to be something more akin to a state-run psychiatric institution. Like a Christmas day long ago, a baby boy has just been born. There's also a suspicious death.

Patients (who remain unseen throughout the play and are referred to only by number) are involved in both instances. Exactly how these two seemingly unrelated events occurred remains a mystery, but in both cases the staff isn't above suspicion.

"We've no room in this establishment for unhealthy minds," says Roote (an officious Paul L. Nolan), the head of the institution. Considering the bizarre behavior of the staff it's not certain his comment applies to the patients.

Among those employed by the vaguely sinister institution is Roote's sober right-hand man Gibbs (Peter Pryor in a frighteningly effective performance), the charmingly manipulative Lush (a smooth-talking Luigi Sottile), the eager-to-please Lamb (Mike Dees), the cool Ms. Cutts (Kristyn Chouiniere in full femme-fatale mode) and the earnest custodian Tubb (John Morrison).

MacMillan has always displayed talent as a director, but with Hothouse she emerges as one of the city's most assured. She takes a bold approach and her blisteringly paced production with its host of audacious performances suits the play well.

Poetic in its use of language, Hothouse is at times enormously funny. But beneath the laughter is an almost suffocating sense of foreboding. Christopher Colucci's intense sound design serves to heighten the play's threatening tone and Meghan Jones' sterile scenic design makes the so-called "rest home" appear more like a morgue than a place of convalescence.

For all the play's shadowy characters and activities, Hothouse is a relatively straightforward satire that attacks a bureaucracy madly out of control. Operating with seemingly no restraint or oversight, the bureaucrats who run the institution are either buffoons or ambitious cutthroats. We may no longer be in the throes of the Cold War, but if the officials in charge of solving America's current economic crisis are anything like the staff in Pinter's play, we're all in a lot of trouble.