"I would want [NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS] to be seen by anyone interested in Balanchine and his choreography... The world of Russian emigres is Chekhovian in both intimacy and intricacy."
Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
"Paints a group portrait of artists for whom time is forever out of joint... [NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS] summons both a sense of place and displacement with such naturalness that you forget that you're watching titans at play."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"An engrossing works that transports Chekhov to the threshold of the Cold War. The country house isn't in the Russian provinces but in Westport, Connecticut, and it's 1948. The characters are exiles whose childhoods on large estates ended with the czar's rue, decades earlier... Though they talk a lot, they don't just talk; they are managing, midwifing, or directly making some of the twentieth century's greatest art."
Jesse Green, New York
"I felt as if I had just experienced a beautifully detailed novel..."
Roma Torre, NY1
"Inspired."
Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg
"Nelson has created a beautifully moving look at a dark time in America. [And he] skillfully encapsulates the complexities of these emigres lives as they struggle with artistic ambitions, memories of past loves, yearning for their long-lost homeland, and current-day political issues."
Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press