The Hothouse

The Hothouse was first produced in 1980, though Harold Pinter wrote the play in 1958 just before commencing work on The Caretaker. 'The Hothouse is one of Pinter's best plays: one that deals with the worm-eaten corruption of bureaucracy, the secrecy of government and the disjunction between language and experience.' Michael Billington. 'The Hothouse is at once sinister and hilarious, suggesting an unholy alliance between Kafka and Fedyeau.' The National Theatre presented a major revival of The Hothouse in July 2007. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.' Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005

Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008.