Inspired by the Bertolt Brecht play BAAL, Richard Nelson’s BAL concerns a thoroughly amoral man who destroys the lives of those around him.

The political plays of those years mark Nelson’s intense response to America’s evolution from its left-leaning Post-Watergate era to the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and the country’s turn to the right. Outrage is the tone of voice that unifies much of his work from this period.

from the Introduction by Robert Marx