One of the mysteries of academic studies of modern American theatre, my own included, is their almost complete disregard for the work of Richard Nelson. In part, perhaps, this is because his more recent work has tended to be performed first in England. In part, though, it may reflect the difficulty of placing him. Not only has much of his energy gone into adaptations of European plays but his own work seems heterogeneous, including brief and apparently enigmatic fables (Bal, The Return of Pinocchio), epic drama (Rip Van Winkle or ‘The Works’) and what appears to be Broadway comedy (An American Comedy). But beneath this variety is a playwright who, for all his eclecticism (and the influence of Bertolt Brecht, Edward Bond, Sam Shepard, Dario Fo and Caryl Churchill, along with Shakespeare and Molière, among others, seems evident), has a clear social and theatrical stance.

Richard Nelson is a moralist, a political writer, a satirist, a teacher but not a polemicist. Once tempted by the ministry, he is inclined to see a certain Calvinism in his approach to work, certainly in his early plays, a belief that the sheer strenuousness of effort is its own reward (a view expressed by the principal character in Rip Van Winkle or ‘The Works’), that art is its own justification. But, at the same time, he believes that to speak in the world is to become involved in the world and he has acknowledged pinning a quotation from Plutarch over his desk: ‘Politics is not like an ocean voyage, something to be gotten over with. It is a way of life.’