[Plenty] is an ambitious effort to create a comprehensive X-ray of England's soul following World War II. Taking social fluoroscopes is an important, even crucial, dramatic function—it was Chekhov's motive in The Cherry Orchard, for example, and Shaw's in Heartbreak House—though such tasks have grown more difficult as the diagnostics have grown more complicated. I don't think Hare entirely accomplishes his intention, but I honor him for it, and pray it has a salutary influence on American playwrights, most of whom are still engaged in counting kitchen angels on the heads of domestic pins….

It is Hare's conviction that World War II represented England's last heroic moment (the play was written before the Falkland victory restored some of the country's lost pride), after which it experienced a series of demoralizing deceptions and compromises, tied to the loss of empire. Ironically, this was a time of relative...