Richard Nelson’s new play Nikolai and the Others will play Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in the spring 2013. Directed by David Cromer, the off-Broadway production will begin performances on April 4, with an opening night set for May 6. No casting or further creative team members have been announced at this time.
Set in 1948 during a spring weekend in Westport, CT, a close-knit group of Russian emigres (including choreographer George Balanchine, composer Igor Stravinsky, conductor Serge Koussevitsky, painter/set designer Sergey Sudeikin and composer Nikolai Nabokov) gather to eat, drink and talk. In Nikolai and the Others playwright Richard Nelson reimagines the creation of Balanchine and Stravinsky’s historic collaboration, the ballet Orpheus, and explores the interesting and controversial ways American art was funded at the outset of the Cold War.
Nelson won a Tony Award for his book to the musical The Dead. His other works include Some Americans Abroad, Two Shakespearean Actors, Chess, My Life with Albertine and the screenplay to the upcoming FDR film Hyde Park on Hudson. Cromer’s select credits include Tribes, Our Town, The House of Blue Leaves, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Yank! and When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincoln Center Theater.