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The History Plays #3
Plenty
Plenty is a play by David Hare about British post-war disillusion. Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs—she had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executive courier in Nazi-occupied France during World War II—and the mundane nature of her present life.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
7 people are currently reading
173 people want to read
About the author
David Hare
116 books85 followersSir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 12, 2024
"It's a common criticism of my works that I write about women whom I find admirable, but whom the audience dislikes."
That's what Hare writes about this play in the edition I read. I have watched the 1985 Meryl Streep film adaptation many times. It always spoke to me. Today, for the first time, I read the play, where I gained additional insights including within Hare's "A Note on Performance" where he recognizes the potential problems and discusses his intended goals.
He was right. The majority of audiences dislike Susan, in the play and film.
Susan is complex and her reactions are complex. In WWII she was an 18 year old member of Special Operations inside France, an experience that was so intense, so dangerous, and so worthwhile that nothing in ordinary post-WWII English life can compare. She will feel a void the remainder of her life. It will haunt her and yet always be an unnamed, maladapted never-resolved disappointment.
I honestly think, that if this had been presented as a story about a man's similar experience, (like the glimpse of Lazar's life near the end of the play) it would have been more empathetically received. And that is a major point. This is an incredibly perceptive depiction of one way that a highly intelligent, capable woman might attempt to cope with the loss of once having a profound purpose and comradery with the world. We aren't used to being made aware that women also had these kinds of war experiences. I read Hare wrote this play because 75% of women who were in Special Operations divorced in the immediate post war years.
Something significant in their expectations had changed.
Susan is not mean or cruel or cold, although it seems that way to the men in the play. She is honest in a way few of us are, or at least were. Honesty can hurt and especially so, apparently, when coming from a woman to a man. Frankly, she wears her heart on her sleeve, in a way not easily recognized, probably not even by herself.
It might look like a hard heart, or like neurosis. But, goddamn, I admire her fight against utter banality. Futile as it might be, self-destructive as it might be, baffling and hurtful to her husband as it might be, her battle never has cruelty as its goal. Indeed, most of her recurring episodes are trying to wrangle some shred of a higher objective than the bourgeoisie status quo to which the world had gladly and easily slipped into after the war.
Was she ever successful? No.
Every time I've watched (and now have read) this play, my heart hurts a little more.
That's what Hare writes about this play in the edition I read. I have watched the 1985 Meryl Streep film adaptation many times. It always spoke to me. Today, for the first time, I read the play, where I gained additional insights including within Hare's "A Note on Performance" where he recognizes the potential problems and discusses his intended goals.
He was right. The majority of audiences dislike Susan, in the play and film.
Susan is complex and her reactions are complex. In WWII she was an 18 year old member of Special Operations inside France, an experience that was so intense, so dangerous, and so worthwhile that nothing in ordinary post-WWII English life can compare. She will feel a void the remainder of her life. It will haunt her and yet always be an unnamed, maladapted never-resolved disappointment.
I honestly think, that if this had been presented as a story about a man's similar experience, (like the glimpse of Lazar's life near the end of the play) it would have been more empathetically received. And that is a major point. This is an incredibly perceptive depiction of one way that a highly intelligent, capable woman might attempt to cope with the loss of once having a profound purpose and comradery with the world. We aren't used to being made aware that women also had these kinds of war experiences. I read Hare wrote this play because 75% of women who were in Special Operations divorced in the immediate post war years.
Something significant in their expectations had changed.
Susan is not mean or cruel or cold, although it seems that way to the men in the play. She is honest in a way few of us are, or at least were. Honesty can hurt and especially so, apparently, when coming from a woman to a man. Frankly, she wears her heart on her sleeve, in a way not easily recognized, probably not even by herself.
It might look like a hard heart, or like neurosis. But, goddamn, I admire her fight against utter banality. Futile as it might be, self-destructive as it might be, baffling and hurtful to her husband as it might be, her battle never has cruelty as its goal. Indeed, most of her recurring episodes are trying to wrangle some shred of a higher objective than the bourgeoisie status quo to which the world had gladly and easily slipped into after the war.
Was she ever successful? No.
Every time I've watched (and now have read) this play, my heart hurts a little more.
December 10, 2023
my biggest red flag is thinking i could fix susan
August 1, 2011
A sequence of scenes which jump around in time — the earliest in Nazi-occupied France and the later ones seeming like they could belong to current time. An odd pair of female characters and a surprising end. I had to recheck repeatedly the dates at the beginnings of scenes to keep track of how they all fit together, and have no idea how this would be followed in a live performance. I learned of this play from a tribute to the playwright's birthday (06/05/1947) on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
August 7, 2020
Tells the story of Susan, a wartime courier for the SOE in France during the Second World War and her life, and the life of Britain in the post war decades, where despite success as an advertising executive and becoming the wife of a diplomat Susan is still inflicted with PTSD from her experiences leading to a downward spiral.
Role I'd like to play: Code Name Lazar or Raymond Burke.
Role I'd like to play: Code Name Lazar or Raymond Burke.
July 26, 2011
So British. So very very British. Also, reverse Chekhov's gun: penis in first scene, then never again.
October 19, 2016
You know, I just feel kinda "meh" about this one. I didn't have any strong feelings about it either way.
July 16, 2021
Tough play to read. The narrative is difficult to discern at times. So many unsympathetic characters.
Hoping the run of Hare plays in the next months are better than PLENTY.
Hoping the run of Hare plays in the next months are better than PLENTY.
November 16, 2018
This has been the year of slowly re-discovering the joy of reading plays.
They are certainly not something I come across very often in the bookstores, but more stumble upon copies in second hand stores and book fairs.
'Plenty' was first published in 1978 and is set mainly just after the Second World War, with boundaries that stretch back to the War and forwards to 1962.
One of the things that struck me most was about how best this could be staged, given that the scene jumps back and forth from woodland in wartime France, to London houses in the 1950s, a bedroom in a Blackpool hotel and the British Embassy in Belgium. We also jump back and forth through time, beginning in 1962, going back to 1943 and then progressing back to the point where we reach the 1960s once more. There are twelve scenes in this journey, and it would take some work to recreate a different look and feel for this journey through time. Scene one and scene ten are almost sequential, but so much happens between the two, that the audience might not see the linkage of time.
A simple story. Susan is English but fights with the French Resistance during the war. She is only 17 when she is left alone in this hostile environment. She survives and after the war becomes involved with Raymond, who works for the Foreign Office. There are overseas postings that follow during his slow career. Susan is wonderful, she speaks her mind and seems unafraid to challenge the bureaucrats who use a language that never quite says what they mean. She feels unloved, so much so that at one point she seeks out a stranger with whom to have a baby. She wants no ties with someone she will fall out with.
At one point, Susan describes her day job in an import export office. I howled with laughter at the understatement of the story about the ghastly Mr Medlicott.
“Susan He has moved in. Or rather, more sinister still, he has removed the frosted glass between our two offices.
Alice Really?
Susan I came in one morning and found the partition had gone. I interpret it as the first step in the mating dance. I believe Medlicott stayed behind one night, set his ledger aside, ripped off his tweed suit and his high collar, stripped naked, took up an axe, swung it at the partition, dropped to the floor, rolled over in the broken glass until he bled, till his whole body streamed blood, then he cleared up, slipped home, came back next morning and waited to see if anything would be said. But I have said nothing. And neither has he. He puts his head down and does not lift it til lunch. I have to look across at his few strands of hair, like seaweed across his skull. And I am frightened of what the next step will be.
Alice I can imagine.
Susan The sexual pressure is becoming intolerable.”
They are certainly not something I come across very often in the bookstores, but more stumble upon copies in second hand stores and book fairs.
'Plenty' was first published in 1978 and is set mainly just after the Second World War, with boundaries that stretch back to the War and forwards to 1962.
One of the things that struck me most was about how best this could be staged, given that the scene jumps back and forth from woodland in wartime France, to London houses in the 1950s, a bedroom in a Blackpool hotel and the British Embassy in Belgium. We also jump back and forth through time, beginning in 1962, going back to 1943 and then progressing back to the point where we reach the 1960s once more. There are twelve scenes in this journey, and it would take some work to recreate a different look and feel for this journey through time. Scene one and scene ten are almost sequential, but so much happens between the two, that the audience might not see the linkage of time.
A simple story. Susan is English but fights with the French Resistance during the war. She is only 17 when she is left alone in this hostile environment. She survives and after the war becomes involved with Raymond, who works for the Foreign Office. There are overseas postings that follow during his slow career. Susan is wonderful, she speaks her mind and seems unafraid to challenge the bureaucrats who use a language that never quite says what they mean. She feels unloved, so much so that at one point she seeks out a stranger with whom to have a baby. She wants no ties with someone she will fall out with.
At one point, Susan describes her day job in an import export office. I howled with laughter at the understatement of the story about the ghastly Mr Medlicott.
“Susan He has moved in. Or rather, more sinister still, he has removed the frosted glass between our two offices.
Alice Really?
Susan I came in one morning and found the partition had gone. I interpret it as the first step in the mating dance. I believe Medlicott stayed behind one night, set his ledger aside, ripped off his tweed suit and his high collar, stripped naked, took up an axe, swung it at the partition, dropped to the floor, rolled over in the broken glass until he bled, till his whole body streamed blood, then he cleared up, slipped home, came back next morning and waited to see if anything would be said. But I have said nothing. And neither has he. He puts his head down and does not lift it til lunch. I have to look across at his few strands of hair, like seaweed across his skull. And I am frightened of what the next step will be.
Alice I can imagine.
Susan The sexual pressure is becoming intolerable.”
January 28, 2023
David Hare's PLENTY centers the experience of a female British agent who returns from her (extremely dangerous) service in France in World War II to a postwar Britain that expects her to dwindle into dutiful invisibility, as a wife or an office worker but certainly nothing that makes use of her real capacity. Susan Traherne can never forget what she once was--when her work mattered, was life-and-death in the service of the Allies--and she becomes an undetonated bomb of frustration and heartbreak. Susan Traherne is a magnificently complex challenge for an actress, and Hare surrounds Susan with a small ensemble of well-developed characters who sharpen the drama and define the conflicts--both intellectual and emotional--brilliantly.
In an opening note, the playwright explains that he wrote PLENTY because he "felt very strongly that women's experience was missing from accounts of the official history of the period" and also that he had read "that the marriages of 75 percent of the female agents for the Special Operations Executives had ended in divorce. It seemed that their work in the war had left them either with memories or expectations which made it very hard for them to settle back into civilian life." His play remains fresh and vital 45 years after its premiere, as challenging and compelling as ever.
In an opening note, the playwright explains that he wrote PLENTY because he "felt very strongly that women's experience was missing from accounts of the official history of the period" and also that he had read "that the marriages of 75 percent of the female agents for the Special Operations Executives had ended in divorce. It seemed that their work in the war had left them either with memories or expectations which made it very hard for them to settle back into civilian life." His play remains fresh and vital 45 years after its premiere, as challenging and compelling as ever.
November 26, 2024
For all of the complexities and nuances of Susan’s character, these decade-spanning scenes felt very disjointed from another. It’s not that it’s complicated to follow her journey or her displeasures throughout the years. It’s that the moments we are forced to focus on in her life feel like the medium-est most interesting ones we could’ve witnessed. I wish there was more ping ponging back to Susan’s life during the war to underscore the present day grievances she expresses rather than hearing about it second hand. Some small bursts of juice in the middle to back half of the play give me a taste of what could’ve been, but it can’t make up for the porridge flavor of the rest of the resentment-filled slices of life of “Plenty”.
November 13, 2025
5 ⭐️
Read for class.
This honestly surprised me! Although I do tend to like historical fiction (whether plays or novels), I didn’t expect to enjoy this so much. There’s an endearing quality about Susan, and her thoughts about the war and life still feel resonant today. Having read a lot of AYM plays recently, I liked how honest and less cruel Hare writes her character. I also think each scene feels like it was carefully thought out, especially with the different time changes. I definitely want to see the movie with Meryl Streep.
Read for class.
This honestly surprised me! Although I do tend to like historical fiction (whether plays or novels), I didn’t expect to enjoy this so much. There’s an endearing quality about Susan, and her thoughts about the war and life still feel resonant today. Having read a lot of AYM plays recently, I liked how honest and less cruel Hare writes her character. I also think each scene feels like it was carefully thought out, especially with the different time changes. I definitely want to see the movie with Meryl Streep.
October 10, 2018
Ahh what to say about this one - boring characters, a terrible protagonist and weak plotline. And sad to see Meryl Streep being wasted in the movie adaptation of this.
My Rating - 2/5
My Rating - 2/5
August 10, 2019
Some laugh out loud lines in this one. I enjoyed it.
Read
July 14, 2023Interesting remarks on British society and the essence of being English
June 1, 2025
قبلاً خونده بودم، توی ۱۴۰۱. صرفاً وارد کردم در گودریدز. کار جالبیه از هر، ولی بهترینشون هم نیست.
July 31, 2016
I really wanted to like this play, especially since Meryl Streep had starred in the movie as Susan Traherme, a former British spy who had worked with the French Resistance in WW II. When the war ends, Susan marries a diplomatic and becomes bored. In the process, Hare has made her character boring. She ruins her husband's career, and herself. She is wilful and demanding. Okay, this is before Second Wave feminism, but Susan is a pain in the butt. The "plenty" of the title is what people felt they would have after the war. Perhaps Susan could have used a little less and had more challenges. The only parts I could relate to were the historical references, such as the Suez Canal crisis. What a waste of Streep's talent!
June 1, 2013
Probably my favourite play, re-read many times. This reading was perhaps the most profound, because it was the first time I discovered the joy in what has been described as a joyless, difficult story. Something about the eternally dissatisfied protagonist in this story really gets to me. The best observation of post-war Britain that I know of.
May 12, 2008
An interesting ,if somewhat strangely indirect read about the effects of wartime and PTSD on the life of one resistance fighter. It was made into a movie with Meryl Streep in 1985.
December 23, 2008
My all time favorite play by my all time favorite playwright.
January 21, 2012
Would be a good double bill with Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem (which has just closed in the West End) - an exploration of Englishness.
July 17, 2014
What have we learned? We've learned that for the woman who has tasted the independence and excitement of fighting in wartime, going back to the kyriarchy same-old really sucks.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews