In this sombre month of D-Day remembrance, how fitting that a theatre should revive David Hare’s Plenty (1978), which tells of one woman’s heroics in the Special Operations Executive in Nazi-occupied France. More than this, though, it illustrates the shabbiness and lack of heroism in post-war Britain and explicitly links our heroine’s gradual unravelling to the falling-away of Britain’s status as a world leader.
It’s a striking play, powerful and angry but, as with much of Hare’s work, there remains something frustratingly fugitive at its heart. If we can’t quite see what drives Susan Traherne (Rachael Stirling, excellent), we can certainly see what drives her crazy, as she swaps the life-or-death peril-cum-excitement of SOE operations for the drabness of office work in the austerity era.
Kate Hewitt’s production looks occasionally adrift on the large and almost bare stage of the Festival Theatre, but is anchored by fine turns from Stirling and Yolanda Kettle as Susan’s friend Alice, the ‘only Bohemian in London’. Why Kettle isn’t a huge star by now continues to baffle me as she is a phenomenal stage performer, with a unique quality of inquisitive alertness.
Susan is a big ask of a part – Meryl Streep memorably played her in the 1985 film - but Stirling, with her rich and resonant voice, acquits herself very well, suggesting Susan’s febrile, increasingly frantic, search for meaning. A modern-day diagnosis would almost certainly say that Susan was suffering from PTSD; no wonder her second-rate diplomat spouse (Rory Keenan) is way out of his depth with her.
Until June 29 (01243 781312, cft.org.uk)
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