Plenty
Opening Night: October 23, 2016
Closing: December 1, 2016
Theater: Joseph Papp Public Theater
David Hare’s PLENTY, one of the most celebrated plays in The Public’s history, returns this season in a riveting new production featuring Olivier and Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz (Betrayal, The Constant Gardener) and Corey Stoll (House of Cards, Troilus and Cressida). A groundbreaking work by the Tony and Olivier Award-winning writer of Skylight and The Hours, PLENTY is the story of Susan Traherne, a fiercely intelligent British secret agent flown into France during the second world war. Susan’s experiences among her war-time colleagues and over the two decades that follow are distilled in powerful scenes in this endlessly layered work about a woman of remarkable bravery, who cannot find in peacetime the values and relationships she cherished in war. When it premiered at The Public in 1982 The New York Times called PLENTY, “an explosive theatrical vision of a world that was won and lost during and after World War II. A relentlessly gripping play” that “punctures our conscience.” Five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux (Arcadia, Cyrano de Bergerac) directs this witty and profoundly moving drama, highly original in structure, about one woman’s struggle to lead a liberated life before the world was ready to set her free.
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October 24, 2016
That bad and beautiful Susan Traherne is back in town, glowering and glamorous and hellbent on kicking the stuffing out of what ever’s left of the British Empire. Somehow, though, she seems more fragile than she did when New Yorkers first met her 34 years ago, and far less dangerous. Like many mavericks who once shocked the world, she has aged into a bit of a bore. Reincarnated with equal parts limp hysteria and fashion-plate elegance by Rachel Weisz, Susan is the radioactively unhappy center of David Hare’s “Plenty,” which has been revived by David Leveaux at the Public Theater, where it was first seen in 1982. At that time, Susan was portrayed by Kate Nelligan, who had originated the part in London, and her arrival was heralded as the second coming of Hedda Gabler.
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