The setting is a farmhouse near Westport, Conn., the time a weekend in the spring of 1948. Some audience patience is required at the outset as we are gradually introduced to the various characters under inspection. The Playbill program is a valuable guide to who’s who, as is an author’s statement insert. Marsha Ginsberg has designed a shell of a farmhouse, which opens up to show its interior, although moving the set-up can be a bit cumbersome. The drama builds more by relationship involvements than by intense plotting.

The Nikolai of the title is “Nicky” Nabokov (Stephen Kunken), a composer and cousin of the writer Vladimir Nabokov. Nikolai’s career has gone into decline as he has become a fixer of problems with the C.I.A., and close to Charles “Chip” Bohlen, who was formerly a State Department official, is a fluent Russian speaker and key in trying to spread American culture and freedom values in the Cold War.

A political background hovers in the context of that Cold War period, later revealed to be a time when the C.I. A. was secretly funding ostensibly free-standing cultural programs. (As a journalist, I covered one such gathering in Paris with a panel consisting of important American writers, only later to be unmasked as a C.I.A.-funded operation.)

Among the others gathered for the weekend are Igor Stravinsky (John Glover), composer; his wife Vera (Blair Brown); stage and film actor Vladimir Sokoloff (John Procaccino), friend of the Stravinskys; Lisa Sokoloff (Betsy Aidem), Vladimir’s wife and Vera Stravinsky’s best friend; George Balanchine (Michael Cerveris), already a well-known choreographer; Maria Tallchief (Natalia Alonso), Balanchine’s wife and dancer; Kolya (Alan Schmuckler), Balanchine’s rehearsal pianist, and Serge Koussevitsky (Michael Rosen), conductor.

Among the various others is Sergey Sudeikin (Alvin Epstein), artist and renowned set designer who was formerly married to Vera Stravinsky. He is seriously ill and preparations are under way to honor him during the weekend.

What emerges from the collection of émigrés under author Nelson’s inspection is a portrait of transplanted artists trying to make it in America while still retaining affection for, and roots in, their homeland despite the political upheavals against which they must operate. On one side is the Communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union, and in America there is the increasing pressure of the Red-scare and congressional investigations.

The commitment to artistry is depicted when space is cleared in the farmhouse for a rehearsal and demonstration of the ballet “Orpheus,” a collaborative effort between Balanchine and Stravinsky. As those gathered watch with interest, there is an exquisite dance excerpt presented with Tallchief (Alonso) and dancer Nicholas Magallenes (Michael Rosen), as directed and guided by Balanchine. It is an important centerpiece in the play.

The story swirls around the artistic decline of Nikolai, the scorn heaped upon him and his resulting self-doubts, as he is embroiled in the political problems, and there is a nasty confrontation between him and Bohlen, depicted as arrogant and manipulative.