Allen, a social economist, is a man of idealistic and principled origins and a committed worker for the left -- but he has familial poison running in his veins. As his struggle with the leader of his party's dominant right faction drifts helplessly from the political to the personal, Allen becomes increasingly controlled by the cold and unyielding anger passed on to him by his steelworker father. This is distinctive Sewell territory, where individual lives are equally at the mercy of powerful external forces as they are of scarcely understood drives within (3 acts, 10 men, 6 women).

Allen, a social economist, is a man of idealistic and principled origins and a committed worker for the left -- but he has familial poison running in his veins. As his struggle with the leader of his party's dominant right faction drifts helplessly from the political to the personal, Allen becomes increasingly controlled by the cold and unyielding anger passed on to him by his steelworker father. This is distinctive Sewell territory, where individual lives are equally at the mercy of powerful external forces as they are of scarcely understood drives within (3 acts, 10 men, 6 women).