Plenty

Starring Rachel Weisz

David Hare's acclaimed World War II drama Plenty returns to the Public, the company which presented the work's New York debut over 30 years ago. Oscar and Olivier Award winner Rachel Weisz (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Constant Gardner) leads the cast of this revival, playing a British secret agent who was flown into occupied France to work for the Resistance. Told through a collection of scenes, scattered out of chronological order, we follow her struggles in dealing with the banality and moral hypocrisy of post-war life in England.

David Hare's Masterpiece

Regarded as a defining theatrical work of the post-war period, Plenty also proved to be the American breakthrough for Hare, whose later works include Skylight and Racing Demon. Premiering in London in 1978, it transferred to New York four years later and was nominated for four Tony Awards. Hare himself subsequently adapted a version for the silver screen, with Meryl Streep, Sting and Sam Neil among the cast.

What is Plenty About?

Covering a span of two decades, Plenty threads together scenes in the life of Susan Traherne, from her time spent as a teenage courier for the French Resistance in 1942, to her bored existence as a housewife in pre-swinging Sixties London. Once so sure of Britain's greatness, the suburban mundanity that surrounds her and foreign policy disasters like the Suez Canal Crisis cause her to question everything she once held dear, leading to a deterioration in her own mental health.