BWW INTERVIEWS: Blair Brown Is One of Nikolai's Others

Blair Brown had her work cut out for her when she accepted the role of Vera Stravinsky, wife of the famed composer Igor Stravinsky, in Richard Nelson's complex play about art and family, NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS. "Vera is a person not well documented," Brown said, "but I was able to find a lot of images of her."

She put that research to good use in the compelling drama that goes inside the creative and personal lives of Stravinsky and his collaborator, George Balanchine. "I copied a dress that she wore, and I know the period clothing is true to the time." (The play takes place in Westport, Conn., in the spring of 1948). "What I notice from her pictures is she seems very at ease in her skin," Brown said.

The complex relationship Vera had with Stravinsky fascinated Brown. "She had been married several times by the time she married Igor. He lived a parallel life. He had children from a previous marriage, and he and Vera never did have children," Brown said. "When I look back now and see it - it was very, very sad, but it was real."

The play's ensemble of 18 bonded like real family members, Brown said. "The thing that moved us all in this production, it was a truly liberated sense of living; these characters all loved their friends, work, family and art. The richness of the subject matter is about family," Brown explained. "It's about friendship, romantic love, and marriage in complex ways.

"It's also about collaboration, finding meaning in work, purpose of art, the way politics can intervene in blindingly stupid ways," she said. "We don't stop learning things; we'll still be learning things" on June 16, when the play closes.

Brown found the play's sprawling production and its focus on artistic people with human foibles appealing. "What I like is it's about very human people, not two-dimensional monsters, but real people," she said. "Not everyone's a nice person - they had their prickly sides, tantrums, but we choose to honor the full artists who lead full lives as an artist and as a human being.

"I love being in a play that talks about beauty in a life," she said. "It's a big concept, all these artists gathering together. It's a great sprawling play with many flaws, but as in any relationship, you love those flaws."

Portraying Vera with sensitivity and accuracy was a challenge. "I don't normally play roles of women who are at ease," she said. "Vera's pretty much an open book; you could read everything on her face." Especially when her ex-husband arrives, she added.

"The hard thing about this play is that there is so much going on underneath," she said of the multi-layered characters. "There are some dark and sad places. I don't think it bothered her to be around her ex-husband," Brown said.

"Vera is the one to go to for help with love trouble," she said. "She helped people get along, and I noticed in some of the early pictures of her it looked like situations amused her a great deal, the folly of mankind.

"She didn't take herself too seriously and she did a lot of things in her life. I think we share some qualities," Brown continued. "The wryness, the way she saw the world is just how I would like to."

Audiences have been an unexpected factor in many performances, Brown said. Unwrapping hard candy and leaving cell phones on are the least of it, she said. "One matinee we had someone in the first row in floods of tears," she recalled. "Then the other day a man said really loud, 'This is so boring,'" she said.

"The people who it works for are those who come and join the party," she said. "Just sit and watch and it will all be revealed."

NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS is at the Lincoln Center Theater through June 16.

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