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