Every so often, perhaps once in a generation, an actor can seem to have been born to play a role. Sir Laurence Olivier as Richard III, for instance. In The Hothouse, on now at Trafalgar Studios, the opposite is true: the role of Roote was born for theatre royalty Simon Russell Beale to play, despite Russell Beale arriving on this earth three years after The Hothouse.

Simon Russell Beale is quite frankly superb. The sweat dripping off his bright pink brow while he frantically paces the performance space with wide-eyed panic and desperation – often with a Christmas hat perched perilously upon his crown, or wide-framed glasses clutched manically in fist – is testament to the work he puts in, even managing to get a laugh as he plucks out the word “rapist” from his quivering lips.

Despite being first performed in 1980, Harold Pinter penned The Hothouse in 1958, arriving at roughly the same time, and sharing roughly the same themes, as Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. The ‘hothouse’ itself appears to be some form of correction centre, an institution placed somewhere between prison and hospital where inmates are impregnated or murdered, and where an unnerving collection of wires and paraphernalia is used to enter people’s minds and ‘improve’ them, for the benefit of wider society. There are no names, just numbers, and even the staff are known by their cold and flavourless monosyllabic surnames: Roote, Gibbs and Cutts. This is complemented by the excellent set: a vacuum without soul or joy with washed-out greens and chipped tiling, whilst an ‘Exit’ sign looms ominously in the corner, rich in Jean-Paul Sartre-esque symbolism.

Whilst some of Pinter’s work may be a little methodical at times, there is not a sentence, a pause, a movement or a facial expression in The Hothouse which doesn’t work to pull the plot along, driving the action forward. The political undercurrent, whilst still strikingly obvious, is thoughtful rather than overwhelming and is often morbidly witty, none more so than when Gibbs (played with calculating menace throughout by John Simm) and Cutts exchange Christmas felicitations and compliments of the season before carrying out an obviously painful psychological experiment on young staffer Lamb (Harry Melling, now all grown up from his Dudley Dursley days in the Harry Potter series). The satire is biting and playful, yet always potentially darker than it may first seem; the way the production flips so effortlessly between high farce and dark (often murderous) tension unsettles the audience enough to ensure full concentration at all times.

The Hothouse may well be a vehicle for Russell Beale and Simm, but their performances are no doubt completed by the excellence on display by all members of the company. John Heffernan clearly enjoys his camped-up performance as the aptly named Lush, a man whose personal brilliance is believed only by himself, and although we sadly don’t see much of Clive Rowe – a true gem of London theatre in my opinion – his charisma and warmth even manage to momentarily breathe life into the deliberately dour set. Indira Varma’s highly sexualised Miss Cutts springs about with an energy much appreciated in an otherwise all-male production.

The ‘war on terror’ and the deconstruction of suspects’ identities has fuelled a new breed of writers and plays, seen right now for instance at the Soho Theatre with its production of Glory Dazed. Yet the current political context also works to provide a sharper resonance and new relevance for plays that have gone before. The Hothouse is a play of such faultless quality that it slots into any time and space, and still finds interesting things to say. It also stars the British stage’s greatest professional. Put simply, it has to be seen.

The Hothouse is on at Trafalgar Studios until 3 August. For more information and tickets, see the Hot House West End website.

“Something is happening.” So begins Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska – the first play of Simon Godwin’s existentialist but eminently watchable double bill at Bristol Old Vic, which also comprises Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape – and it’s a line which sets the tone not only for the evening’s works, but for the nature of this pairing as a theatrical event in itself.

The coupling is an undoubted stroke of conceptual brilliance. Pinter’s play explores the waking moments of a woman who has spent her entire adult life in a comatose no-man’s-land, whilst Beckett’s opens up a plaintive, regretful, caustic dialogue between an aging writer and the recorded voices of his younger selves. A Kind of Alaska’s Deborah steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the time she has lost, and looks to the future with a tragically unfounded resolve; the eponymous Krapp simply “burns to be gone”. In these ways and many more, the works serve to echo and illuminate one another – if evidence were needed of the two literary giants’ shared interests in the nature of memory and the fragility of the human condition, this is it.

But even undisputed gems don’t direct themselves, and what Godwin brings to the table is a crucial awareness that theoretical parallels ought not to obscure each piece’s individual tonal qualities. His treatment of Beckett and Pinter suggests the two less as brothers-in-arms than as stylistic cousins, happy to share ideas at family lunches, but far from artistically co-dependent. The end product is an evening which, though not entirely consistent, is sure to move hearts as much as it stimulates minds.

A Kind of Alaska is simply sublime. Marion Bailey, by turns coquettish and pensive, amused and outraged, selfish and pitiable, never ceases to impress as Deborah. She captures with painstaking accuracy the confusion of a woman torn between her emotional youth and physical age; when her teenaged eyes steadily take in the backs of her middle-aged hands, a mere flicker denotes the slow-burning horror of realisation. It makes the ignorant petulance of her exchanges with her doctor and sister – played with buckets of restrained feeling by Richard Bremmer and Carolyn Backhouse – all the more saddening, and the work’s conclusion all the more painful: Pinter isn’t too concerned with giving his audiences catharsis. It is true that some misjudged blocking threatens to exclude a third of the audience from the detail of a particularly key exchange, and moments of Dan Jones’s sound design confuse the evocation of reminiscence with that of nostalgia, but the concerns are minor – even if this rarely staged mini-masterpiece were seen twice as often as it currently is, you’d be unlikely to find a better take on it than this.

Unexpectedly, Krapp’s Last Tape – certainly the more famous of the evening’s offerings – suffers by comparison. Godwin gives us a much warmer interpretation than we have been used to in recent years. He offers one diametrically opposed, in fact, to the relentlessly bleak 2006 production which Pinter himself starred in – even Charles Balfour’s single light bulb is positively homely. This in itself is no bad thing, but it does throw up some problems. For much of the first twenty minutes, Bremmer’s Krapp comes across as man content: happy to eat his bananas, to drink a little, to indulge in his own past. As all of this changes, and he sweeps the boxes of spooled memories which clutter his desk onto the floor; the shock isn’t necessarily a good one. The action feels jerky, out of place and scripted without being requisite.

Things pick up, and Richard Bremmer – a hunching giant with sunken eyes – ought to be lauded for some interesting choices. He does well to imbue his Krapp with a trace of the old arrogance which his recordings reek of, whilst a feeling of rueful resignation rather than embittered resentment provides satisfying food for thought. Above all, viewed just 15 minutes after A Kind of Alaska has finished, the sensation of connections being made, pieces slotting into place and tentative links interweaving is one to be treasured. But, contrary to expectations, it is the sight not of Bremmer and his tape recorder, but of Marion Bailey’s face slowly being lost to the darkness which will, hauntingly, remain with me.

A Kind of Alaska/Krapp’s Last Tap are at the Bristol Old Vic until 12 May. http://www.bristololdvic.org.uk/

This weekend saw the Guardian open its doors to readers for its first ever Guardian Open Weekend. Just some of the theatrical highlights on offer saw Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent talk to Lyn Gardner, Jez Butterworth in conversation with Andrew Dickson and, in an entertaining role reversal, critic Michael Billington being interviewed by Sir David Hare.

But first-off, a lively discussion on the subject of ‘What Can the Arts Offer in an Age of Austerity?’ On the panel were the Guardian’s Claire Armistead (Literary Editor), Melissa Denes (Arts Editor) and Mark Brown (Arts Correspondent), as well as author and founder of Poems on the Underground Judith Chernaik. Perhaps unsurprisingly, speakers and audience alike spoke overwhelmingly in defence of the arts (in particular the need to safeguard access to them), but there was still room for animated debate. Armistead paid lip service to pertinent arguments against cultural spending (“why pay for art in hospitals if you can’t afford hip replacements?”) and Chernaik emphasised that art has always survived – and always will – without government support. She namechecked artists who have overcome much more than austerity, from war to the Great Depression. Significantly, she also questioned the notion that the arts really are experiencing austerity (a word falsely applied by this government?) given the money consistently spent by audiences and consumers of the arts today.

Other points of contention arose with regard to how funding has been spent previously. One audience member referred to the large grants paid to institutions such as the Royal Opera House where high ticket prices might limit access to the well-off; others questioned whether funding really has succeeded in permeating beyond major cities. Brown’s commentary on the regenerative effects of funding in areas such as Margate (with its Turner Contemporary) was disputed by an audience member who questioned whether a gallery visited primarily by a “London weekend crowd” really benefitted local people, even in monetary terms. Another went so far as to suggest that, rather than the arts being starved by austerity, Britain seemed historically to need to be “battered down” to start producing worthwhile art.

Debate was rife elsewhere in the Guardian towers, too, but so it seemed was a fascination with occasions in which it might be lacking. In their separate talks, both Michael Billington and Nicolas Kent addressed the idea of “preaching to the converted” with both in fact defending the case for doing so. “What’s the problem with it?” Billington asked, commenting on whether political plays have made a real difference to society; “it happens in churches up and down the country”. Kent spoke of audiences at the Tricycle, stating that “if people feel passionately about something and you can reactivate their passion… that can be very useful. It’s reassuring to know that as a society we care about these issues.”

He also highlighted the way in which the Tricycle’s particular brand of political theatre, the “tribunal play”, presents an audience with evidence distilled in the purest form, allowing them to examine it for themselves. In the case of Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2003) he described how the audience arrived at “the opposite conclusion to Lord Hutton, as did the nation”.

So what does theatre have to offer that journalism cannot? Gardner pointed discussion towards the tension between the two media. For many plays, it seems largely a case of access and coverage. Trials and enquiries occurring behind a courtroom’s closed doors could be steno-graphed, distilled and staged to reach a wider audience. Norton-Taylor (also the Guardian’s Security Editor) described the “butterfly-mindedness” of many news editors, which often prevents stories from receiving the in-depth, continued exploration they deserve. As a journalist, he finds an audience that engages with a subject for two or three consecutive hours immensely satisfying.

However, plays can also offer a certain visceral detail impossible to the journalist. Norton-Taylor emphasised the significance of details such as body language, which the written reporter cannot describe but which his actors endeavoured to recreate with accuracy. For this same reason, Kent said he was uninterested in creating a play about the Leveson Inquiry, because it has been televised throughout and “at some point someone will string together an overview”. This statement was challenged by audience members entreating Kent to reconsider, and some thinking aloud from Norton-Taylor also suggested that Leveson could perhaps yet find itself in the Tricycle’s limelight. “I feel a play coming,” said Kent.

For playwright Butterworth, the premise upon which the creative process begins is perhaps less easily definable. Sometimes triggered by note making, it nonetheless essentially results from strange moments of inspiration, or thoughts which elicit a physical response: “I only follow ideas which give me goosebumps”, he said. One such moment occurred while driving, when a line familiar to Jerusalem fans suddenly popped into his head: “I, Rooster Byron, hereby place a curse upon the Kennet and Avon council”. He stopped the car and asked himself “what on earth was that?”, but felt a burst of excitement. However the roots of Jerusalem actually extend much earlier to a 2004 Royal Court read-through of a play set in a wood. Wryly describing this as “the most painful experience of my life”, Butterworth explained how this early attempt “wanted to be itself so badly, it wasn’t”. He never returned to that script in writing Jerusalem, but observes that the trouble he encountered has given him a curious new determination: “I no longer follow the things I want to write. I follow the things I don’t want to write.”

Butterworth also spoke fondly of his early connection with theatre; a desire to “go to Cambridge [University] and write plays” was fuelled by watching his older brother in a production of Brian Friel’s Translations there. Playwriting really was his sole focus as he admitted to having attended just one lecture in three years, and reflected fondly upon being quite literally chased by his head of studies Tom Morris (Director of War Horse) for an essay he would never write.

But there is also a kind of writing that Butterworth has avoided as a reader, upon Harold Pinter’s advice: reviews. Butterworth’s explanation invites controversy: “Harold worked out that there wasn’t a single person reviewing for the nationals who wouldn’t swap places with him in a heartbeat, and there wasn’t a single playwright whose work was being produced who would swap places with them.”

However, what arose most clearly from the interview was in fact Butterworth’s humility. On working with actors such as Mark Rylance to rewrite a script, Butterworth emphasised that the most important work happens inside the rehearsal room. He said that attempts to “forensically” assign parts of a performed play to a particular hand were ridiculous, because a play,  like a child, is a thing in itself: “I never feel even that the words I write belong to me, so why would anything else?”

For David Hare, criticism possessed potentially more irritating tendencies. Referring to a critic who had regularly mistaken not only the name of a play but also the theatre in which it was staged, he declared, “there seems to be a basic level of reporting about theatre criticism – that you get the facts right – and an awful lot of critics can’t seem to get over that bar”.  Not a charge he levelled at Billington, but he did suggest that his interviewee tended to be “soft on actors”. Billington partially accepted this, saying he had been moved by the (often tearful) effect of harsh criticism upon the people who must, after all, “make this thing live night after night”. To which Hare countered that he has himself likewise “picked playwrights out of the gutter”.

Billington also responded defensively to Hare’s suggestion that he had “a certain idea of how a play should be staged”. He explained that while he felt a critic was duty-bound to place plays into a context based on their experience and expertise, he also tried always to approach each production with the “innocence and wide-eyed enthusiasm” of a first-time theatregoer. He celebrated the “democratisation of criticism” through the recent boom in websites, blogs and social media. This idea also featured earlier in the weekend in the discussion ‘What Defines the Guardian?’ with Editor Alan Rusbridger. A critic like Billington, says Rusbridger, writes his professional review, but the show has likely been watched by nine hundred or so others. “Are their views unimportant? The answer is so obvious.”

Wholly representative of the Guardian’s current policy of “open journalism”, this sentence encapsulated the theme of the weekend overall. So let’s watch, react and talk about theatre, but just remember (for Hare’s sake) to get those all-important facts right.

Sarah Williams was at the Guardian’s Open Weekend, 24 – 25 March 2012. For more information, visit the website here.

Image credit: the Guardian

Harold Pinter, perhaps best known for his pauses, dialogues within contained rooms and tormented characters, is perhaps less known for some of his one-act plays such as One For The Road and Victoria Station currently being performed in Notting Hill Gate’s newest theatre, The Print Room. These tense and translucent texts are difficult to digest, their lack of clarity over characters and situations means that under the careful direction of Jeff James, the pieces thrive, with a mysterious intensity. Both One For The Road and Victoria Station seem to fit perfectly within the crisp white structure of The Print Room which has been stripped back to its bare walls and framing. Under the intense luminous strip lighting of Mischa Twitchin’s design, the power-shifting characters in both of the plays clash together.

Victoria Station is perhaps the easier piece to follow. A driver (Kevin Doyle) is sitting in his taxi when he receives a call over the radio from the Controller (Keith Dunphy). What follows is an exchange between two men clearly lost in their lives, communicating via the impersonal means of a radio. Doyle is something of a blundering idiot, unable to state where he is, what he is doing or indeed if he can move onto the next job the Controller has for him. Dunphy however is full of rage as he spits into the microphone demanding answers. The exchange is powerful, two lone voices in the night transmitting to each other, which in turn becomes somewhat comedic. Designer Alex Lowde’s stark staging is remarkably clever as a heap of metal becomes the engine of the taxi, defining the space without really forcing it upon us.

As Victoria Station is a short piece, One For The Road is played immediately afterwards, with Doyle slowly standing and morphing into the character of Nicolas, an unknown controller within an organisation, a building which is holding captive Victor (Dunphy again) and Gila (Anna Hewson). Again Pinter doesn’t define or set the scene as such, his words alone seem to, under the direction of James, spark the tense atmosphere that One For The Road descends into. Twitchin’s lighting is again perfectly stark, as doors on either end of performance space glow a viscous, clinical, godly white.

One For The Road is a lot more difficult to follow. Pinter only gives hints to the situation the characters are within. Doyle as Nicolas doesn’t quite find the right powerful authoritive figure that is needed to command the stage as perhaps James intended, but with both Dunphy and Hewson as tragically disjointed and scared weeping figures, this isn’t a problem. The intensity of the exchanges as Nicolas intergates each of the family members is unnerving at times, and even more so as we are left in the dark about the location or what has previously happened.

Both Dunphy and Hewson are excellent within their roles here, they are pathetic characters who, under the glaring lights of interrogation, flounder and fall to begging for mercy. Perhaps it is the shortness of the pieces, or the distinct inability to really sink your teeth into some of the characters, that makes for the evening of pieces to be hard to digest. You sense your way through One For The Road using a mixture of sight and sound, atmosphere and gestures to unravel what Pinter has concocted within this room of his. It is by no means an easy couple of texts for James to tackle as a direction, but he does so well, even if I would have wanted more (but then I think there is only so far an intense character can go).

Pinter continually challenges us, both as audiences and theatre makers. He has a knack at crawling under our skins and sitting uncomfortably there, lurking. One For The Road has these qualities, and it is this that I can feel now, so whilst I found Victoria Station more appealing to watch, it is perhaps my discomfort of watching the unknown situation and characters that James and his cast have drawn out from Pinter’s dialogue that has ultimately left me feeling uncomfortable. The evening might be over within 55 minutes, but the affects of the production will last much longer.

Victoria Station and One For The Road are playing at The Print Room until 1st October. Following this, the productions will transfer to The Young Vic between 6th – 15th October.