The inspiration for Plenty came from the fact that 75 per cent of the women engaged in wartime SOE operations divorced in the immediate post-war years; the title is derived from the idea that the post-war era would be a time of "plenty", which proved untrue for most of England.
The play was revived Off-Broadway at The Public Theater, opening on 20 October 2016. David Leveaux directed, with the cast that starred Rachel Weisz as Susan Traherne and Corey Stoll as Raymond Brock.[7] The 1978, 1982, 1983 and 1999 scripts were all examined and Hare was consulted as the production took shape.
Plenty was revived at Chichester in 2019, in the Festival Theatre between 7-29 June. Kate Hewitt directed and it starred Rachael Stirling as Susan and Rory Keenan as Raymond.
Overview
Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs and her present, more ordinary life. She had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executivecourier in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. However, she regrets the mundane nature of her present life, as the increasingly depressed wife of a diplomat whose career she has destroyed. Viewing society as morally bankrupt, Susan has become self-absorbed, bored, and destructive — the slow deterioration in her mental health mirrors the crises in the ruling class of post-war Britain.
Susan Traherne's story is told in a non-linear chronology, alternating between her wartime and post-wartime lives, illustrating how youthful dreams rarely are realised and how a person's personal life can affect the outside world.
Reception
In the programme notes to the original production Hare writes that "...ambiguity is central to the idea of the play. The audience is asked to make its own mind up about each of the actions.". This ambiguity, however, was not understood by contemporary critics, who found themselves in a "consensus of confusion" over the work's meaning and significance. Colin Ludlow, writing in London Magazine later that year, found that his fellow critics had failed to understand Plenty through "pure laziness" and because they were offered no easy solutions to the social problems presented on stage. After later productions, both in the theatre and on film, "...time has shown the play to be a significant contribution to both British and world drama.".[8][9]
One critic who recognized the play's worth early on was Sylviane Gold of The Boston Phoenix. Reviewing the play's Off-Broadway production, she wrote that "the two acts and 12 scenes of David Hare’s Plenty kept my ears in a state of high excitement from start to finish ... all of Plenty’s exchanges crackle with invention; every event is charged with the unexpected ... it’s hard to imagine anyone improving on Hare’s play."[10]
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