Review: Plenty at the Sheffield Studio

A strong start to what promises to be a thrilling season

HAVING announced a season of work of the writing of David Hare nine months ago, this felt a long time coming. Sheffield Theatres’ David Hare season, an unprecedented month-long celebration which takes over the Studio, Crucible and Lyceum theatres of the city, finally got underway this week with Thea Sharrock’s Plenty.

I have rarely seen the Studio theatre so full, such was the anticipation for this production and the season it heralds.

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With Sheffield artistic director Daniel Evans, one of the great English theatre directors Peter Gill and one of its hottest properties in Thea Sharrock at the helm of each of the productions, the season is well served by its directors

Sharrock could be forgiven for wondering if she had drawn the short straw by being given the Studio work but she has come up with a show that looks and feels epic. It feels like it could be on the stage of the much bigger Crucible.

Hare’s time-shifting Plenty tells the story of Susan Traherne, a cut-glass accented English woman who fights during the Second World War with the Resistance in France and finds that the rest of her life fails to live up to the excitement.

Sharrock doesn’t play down the intelligence of the script, refusing to give us an easy way through a convoluted story, instead demanding that the audience works to understand and appreciate the intelligence of the writing.

It is an approach that pays off in buckets and gives the strongest of starts to this thrilling season.