Plenty description
Plenty follows a woman who had her best years at twenty and spends the next two decades unable to settle for what came after.
Susan Traherne worked as a courier for the Allies in occupied France, doing work of real consequence before she was out of her teens. The play tracks her through the peace that follows, across the Festival of Britain, Suez and the years of supposed plenty, as a marriage, a career and a country all fail to match what she once had. It is a portrait of a life measured against a war, and of a generation told to be grateful.
David Hare wrote the play for the National Theatre, where it premiered in the Lyttelton in 1978 before running on Broadway and being filmed in 1985 with Meryl Streep. This production returns it to the same auditorium and is staged ahead of Hare's eightieth birthday.
The play is by David Hare, whose Racing Demon, Skylight and Stuff Happens were all staged at the National Theatre, and who has won Olivier Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards for his screenplays.
Emilia Clarke, known for Game of Thrones and seen in the West End in The Seagull, makes her National Theatre debut. The director is Richard Eyre, who ran the National Theatre from 1988 to 1997 and whose productions there included Guys and Dolls and Hare's own state-of-the-nation trilogy. Further casting has not yet been announced.
Book tickets for a play about the cost of having been useful once.
