First performed in 1978, Plenty is 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, as the increasingly depressed wife of a diplomat whose
career she has destroyed. Viewing society as morally bankrupt, Susan has
become self-absorbed, bored, and destructive -- the slow deterioration
in her mental health mirrors the crises in the ruling class of post-war
Britain.
Susan Traherne's story is told in a non-linear chronology, alternating
between her wartime and post-wartime lives, illustrating how youthful
dreams rarely are realized and how a person's personal life can affect
the outside world.