Dark dealings at 'The Hothouse'

The latest production by the purposefully itinerant Dark & Stormy theater company takes place in the lobby of the Grain Belt Bottling House apartments in northeast Minneapolis. The cavernous, somewhat sterile space feels like a soundstage at a Hollywood movie studio.

But the producers of Harold Pinter's "The Hothouse," which opened Friday, use technology to reduce the scale of the unusual venue. They mike the performers and put headsets on the audience.

When combined with a tautly proficient acting company, the result is a disturbingly funny tragicomedy that is surprisingly intimate. It may not take place in a tight, combustible space that is one of the definitions of Pinteresque, but it is still effective.

Dark & Stormy is developing a reputation for compelling holiday counterprogramming. Last year, it offered Adam Bock's darkly comic play, "The Receptionist," (and in another venue owned by Artspace, which provided the Grain Belt space). This year, the troupe goes to darker corners of the human psyche.

Pinter's play is about corrupt power and naked desire in the context of an ill-defined institution. "Hothouse," which takes place on Christmas Day 1966, is set in a place that could be a mental asylum, a sanatorium or some similar locale. It has patients who are referred to not by names but by numbers.

The action starts with a discussion in the office of Roote (Robert Dorfman), the seemingly forgetful man who runs the place. As Roote sits at his desk, his cool and efficient factotum, Gibbs (Mark Benninghofen), informs him that a patient has been killed. Soon we learn that another patient has come up pregnant, which means that there's a rapist on staff. Roote is a suspect in all of it.

Other characters seem largely metaphorical, including a sacrificial innocent named Lamb (John Catron), an alcoholic named Lush (Bill McCallum) and Miss Cutts (Sara Marsh), the boss' mistress, who also is having an affair with the boss' underling.

The setup is a fraught one, rife with potential for calamity. But Ben McGovern's production held my attention, even with the occasional resident or guest in the building walking by the action. In fact, the seeming distractions of unknown people passing by amplified the oddball setting.

Dorfman plays Roote as a canny and artful dodger. He recalls a mob boss who pretends to be senile while ordering hits on his enemies. But Dorfman's red herrings are credible enough to make us doubt his guilt.

But the one who really keeps it close to the vest is Benninghofen, whose Gibbs is an ambitious climber. Gibbs is like a humorless Frasier Crane, the TV character created by Kelsey Grammer. Beneath a strait-laced, almost clerical demeanor, he plots the ugliest deeds.

Marsh's Miss Cutts injects some potent sexual tension into the production, and could be said to influence one lover to destroy another.

"Hothouse" has costumes by Lisa Jones and no real set to speak of. The minimal design elements are not missed much because the spare, clinical production holds you in its disturbed, and disturbing, orbit.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390