PLENTY By David Hare
DANIEL EVANS AND KATHY BOURNE PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHAN PERSSON
WELCOME
Welcome to our second play in the Festival Theatre this season, David Hare’s Plenty. When it opened at the National Theatre in 1978, the play caused a great stir, and has since become known as one of the great modern classics. David’s South Downs and his Young Chekhov Trilogy both premiered here before transferring to London, and Chichester has also seen notable revivals of Racing Demon, Pravda, The Secret Rapture and The Blue Room. We are very happy that Plenty is now joining that roster, in a new production by director Kate Hewitt. Kate’s riveting production of Cock by Mike Bartlett was one of the highlights of Festival 2018. Since then, she has directed Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train at the Young Vic to universal acclaim. We are also delighted that Rachael Stirling is making her Chichester debut in the role of Susan Traherne. One
of the most striking actors of her generation, Rachael has a multitude of stage and TV credits ranging from Medea and The Winter’s Tale to The Bletchley Circle and Wild Bill. Rory Keenan makes a welcome return as Raymond Brock; last seen here in 2015 in Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, he has since appeared in Long Day’s Journey Into Night in the West End and New York. Also returning are Anthony Calf and Yolanda Kettle, both of whom were last here in 2015’s For Services Rendered. On 19 June there’s an unmissable opportunity to hear Tania Szabo telling the story of her mother Violette, the legendary SOE agent. Later in this programme, David Stafford’s article emphasises how much of a debt we owe these extraordinary women, while David Coxon unveils the vital role that the local Tangmere airfield played in SOE operations. We hope you enjoy this performance.
Executive Director Kathy Bourne
cft.org.uk
Artistic Director Daniel Evans
S U M M E R 2 019
Josie Lawrence Hyoie O’Grady Amara Okereke
OKLAHOMA! Music by Richard Rodgers Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II Based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs Original choreography by Agnes de Mille Directed by Jeremy Sams, a love-struck crew of spirited ranchers lead us through the glorious score of this exuberant musical, from Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ to the show-stopper Oklahoma.
15 July – 7 September #OklahomaMusical
cft.org.uk
10 TICKETS FROM
£
A U T U M N 2 019
John Simm Dervla Kirwan
MACBETH By William Shakespeare Paul Miller directs John Simm and Dervla Kirwan in this contemporary production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy.
21 September – 26 October #Macbeth
cft.org.uk
10 TICKETS FROM
£
LEAP
LEARNING, EDUCATION AND PARTICIPATION Our Learning, Education and Participation department works with people of all ages and abilities, offering opportunities to get involved with CFT beyond the work you see on our stages. A wide range of practical workshops, talks, tours and performances aims to excite and inspire everyone who takes part.
COMMUNITY
CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE
Enjoy developing artistic, personal and social skills through our workshops, projects, productions and award-winning Youth Theatre for young people of all abilities. Chichester Festival Youth Theatre | Holiday Activities | Arts Award
EDUCATION
Our work with local schools, colleges and universities is designed to inspire and enrich students’ learning, while the next generation of arts professionals is nurtured through our training and apprenticeships programme. In-school workshops and projects | Work Experience | School Theatre Days
Learn about life behind the scenes, discover more about productions, develop creative skills, socialise and share experiences with others through workshops and community projects for anyone aged 18 +. Get Into It! workshops | Talks and Discussions | Heritage projects | Dementia Friendly activities
FAMILIES
We’re always delighted to welcome our youngest visitors and their grown-ups to the Theatre. Families can explore and have fun with workshops, productions, events and activities. Family Foyle sessions | Little Notes | Fun Palaces | Family workshops
cft.org.uk/leap
PLENTY By David Hare
PLENTY ON STAGE AND SCREEN David Hare was 29 when, in March 1977, he carried the first draft of his latest play up to the fourth-floor of the National Theatre to see its Director, Peter Hall. The visit is recalled by Hall in his autobiography: ‘Plenty was introduced to me when David appeared in my office sporting what I’m sure was a deliberately torn sweater. He told me that if I would commit to doing the play, he might be prepared to let me read it, and placed it on my desk.’
Susan Traherne has had a good war and then can find no role in the peace. By this point, three years into Hall’s NT tenure, Hare had already directed a touring production of Trevor Griffiths’s The Party (1973) and, in July 1976, the first world premiere in the National’s new, three-theatre home on the South Bank, Howard Brenton’s Weapons of Happiness. It had seen Brenton and Hare profiled in the Sunday Times, under the headline ‘Meet the wild bunch’, as ‘well-educated, hard-headed and inquisitive, and full of that blistering discontent characteristic of the single-minded revolutionary in a placid society.’ Hall had been disappointed to miss out on Hare’s raucous, semi-autobiographical account of a rock band performing at a Cambridge May Ball, Teeth’n’Smiles featuring Helen Mirren (Royal Court, 1975), and was delighted to be offered Plenty. It follows the independent, fiercely intelligent and volatile Susan Traherne, from the early 1940s to the 60s, from her exhilarating service as a courier with the Special Operations Executive in Nazi-occupied France, to post-war disillusionments in London, DAVID HARE,1979 IMAGE COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES
chiefly dead-end jobs and a stultifying, childless marriage to Raymond Brock, an underachieving diplomat, who is caught up in the Suez Crisis of 1956. In Hare’s words, Traherne has ‘had a good war and then can find no role in the peace’. Through her, he wanted to explore ‘the cost of spending your whole life in dissent.’ Hare wrote to Hall on 5 June, asking to be allowed to direct Plenty himself – they had talked of handing it to John Dexter or William Gaskill or John Schlesinger – with the 26-yearold Canadian, Kate Nelligan as Traherne: ‘Kate’s problem would be with the age, although the rewrite will bring the span down from 19 to 37, which I don’t think is outside her range... A script which isn’t yet written. A writer who believes he can direct his own work. An actress five years too young and who sells no tickets. If you say you are no longer interested, then I would quite understand.’ Hall acceded to both requests: Hare’s production of Plenty would open in the 900-seat Lyttelton in April 1978. Comparison between the published Plenty text and the first draft (which I read in Hare’s papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas), shows that his revisions between June 1977 and April 1978 not only made Traherne younger to accommodate Nelligan, but also introduced new characters and new scenes, including a finale far more affecting than the original ending. The Lyttelton cast included Stephen Moore as Brock, Julie Covington as Susan’s best friend, Alice, and Basil Henson as Sir Leonard Darwin, Brock’s boss at the Foreign Office in 1956, when both become embroiled in the Suez Crisis. Shortly before the opening, Nelligan scribbled this note to Hare: ‘I am honoured to play Susan Traherne in the play Plenty. Life will never be so good again. And I thank you. I do sincerely thank you, David. Kate.’ The press night was watched by Howard