Theatregoers travel once more into the strange but familiar territory that has come to be called Pinterland courtesy of a fine revival this week by the student company Illyria Productions of The Hothouse. Harold Pinter wrote the play in 1958, but put it aside in favour of work on The Caretaker. It was not to surface again for more than 20 years, when its status as an important part of the writer’s oeuvre was at once recognised.

Funny and frightening in almost equal measure, the play is set in an institution whose precise status is never fully explained. That it houses ‘patients’ suggests it is a hospital; that they are locked in their rooms makes clear they have no wish to be there. We hear much of the ‘ministry’ running the establishment, especially of its respect for order and control. Here, surely, is a place of confinement for people daring to differ over questions of politics, who must be taught the error of their ways.

In this clear-eyed study of a bureaucracy at work we see staff jealous and contemptuous of some of their rivals, while eager to befriend, even lusting after, others. We meet none of the patients they watch — people known only by numbers — though we hear much of the pregnancy of one and the death of a second, and the ongoing investigations of these irregularities. There is an appearance by just one of the ‘under-staff’, the army of cooks, cleaners and the like who, as in the world beyond the barbed wired walls, keep the whole shebang on the road. He is Tubb (Barnaby White), a forelock tugging menial bearing a gift-wrapped Christmas cake for the boss.

Roote affects to be delighted by the present, though whether he is is doubtful, given his propensity for uttering words because he likes the sound of them — the juicy, highly Pinteresque ‘credentials’, for instance — and for embracing ideas out of sheer cussedness. A revolving world? Not for him: “If the world was going round we would be falling all over the room. But are we? Are we?” Hear these words in the clipped tones of a martinet military man and you have Roote as portrayed by the excellent Matt Gavan, playing some 30 years above his age for director Jamie MacDonagh.

Greasing up to him for advancement is Ziad Samaha’s Gibbs, a coldly efficient disciplinarian who would have prospered well under Hitler. His partner in both crime and passion is the aptly named torturer Cutts (Ruby Thomas), who is cunning enough to facilitate her upward course by bedding the boss as well. When she and Gibbs subject a dull-as-ditchwater colleague (anyone for table tennis?) to a distressing-to-watch electric shock interrogation in a padded cell, we might pause to note that he, too, possesses an appropriate name. Lamb (William Hatcher) is ideal for a sacrifice.

The only man who is fearless in the face of his superior — insouciantly so at times — is the Jack-the-laddish Lush, entertainingly portrayed by the versatile Jordan Waller. This suggests that he knows one or more of Roote’s guilty secrets.

The play continues until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com)