107. The Hothouse by Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter originally conceived of The Hothouse as a sixty-minute radio play. He summarized it thus in 1958:

The play is set in a psychological research centre. One department of this establishment is engaged in conducting tests to determine reactions of the nervous system to various stimuli. The subjects for these tests are drawn from volunteers who are paid an hourly rate for their services, in the interests of science. The play will demonstrate the indifference of this particular department (in the persons of the doctor and her assistant — also female) to the human material on which it bases its deductions. It will demonstrate the excesses to which scientific investigation can lead when practised by adherents dedicated to the point of fanaticism.

This scenario substantially survived in the finished stage-play, which is set in a government rest-home where the patients are given electric shocks. The ‘heat’ of the hothouse suggests both the electric shocks and the sexual and emotional arousal of both torturers and tortured.

But the theme and title came from Pinter’s own turn in the hot-seat in 1954, when he submitted himself to medical experiments for cash. He recalled to Michael Billington:

I went along in 1954 to the Maudsley Hospital in London, as a guinea-pig. They were offering ten bob or something for guinea-pigs and I needed the money desperately. I read a bona fide advertisement and went along. It was all above board, as it seemed. Nurses and doctors all in white. They tested my blood-pressure first. Perfectly all right. I was put in a room with electrodes. They said, “Just sit there for a while and relax.” I’d no idea what was going to happen. Suddenly there was a most appalling noise through the earphones and I nearly jumped through the roof. I felt my heart go...BANG! The noise lasted a few seconds and then was switched off. The doctor came in grinning and said, “Well, that really gave you a start, didn’t it?” I said, “It certainly did.” And they said, “Thanks very much.” There was no interrogation, as in the play, but it left a deep impression on me. I couldn’t forget the experience. I was trembling all over. And I would have been in such a vulnerable position if they had started to ask me questions. Later I asked them what it was all about and they said they were testing levels of reaction. That mystified me. Who exactly were they going to give this kind of shock-treatment to? Anyway, The Hothouse was kicked off by that experience. I was well aware of being used for an experiment and feeling quite powerless.

Consulted:
Billington, Michael: Harold Pinter (1996)