0:00

Trigger warning. This podcast involves

0:02

discussions of child sexual abuse

0:04

and pedophilia. Listener discretion

0:06

is advised. Alan

0:10

Jay Lerner didn't need to take suggestions

0:13

from his assistant. He was Alan

0:15

Jay Learner. He was a Broadway

0:18

legend. He had written lyrics and librettos

0:20

for huge musicals like My Fair

0:23

Lady for Camelot, for Brigade

0:25

Doone. I don't know what Brigade Dooon is, he wrote

0:27

it. He'd worked in movies doing the music

0:30

with collaborator Frederick Lowe for Gigi,

0:32

and he wrote An American in Paris.

0:35

But those hits were a

0:37

while back now, and it was the

0:39

nineteen seventies. Learner's work didn't

0:41

fit as well into the Broadway culture

0:43

at the seventies. It kicked off hits that had

0:46

overwhelmed New York in a culture shifting way

0:48

in the mid to late sixties into the early seventies

0:50

were sexy, edgy stuff

0:53

like Hair and Cabaret

0:55

and Company. And by nineteen seventy

0:57

one, God's Bell and Jesus Christ

0:59

super Star. You know, the sexy

1:01

Jesus musicals. Broadway was

1:04

getting horny, and Alan

1:06

Jay Lerner was not a horny lyricist.

1:08

His work was pretty traditional, featuring

1:11

heavy costumes and straightforward love

1:13

stories with catchy burst into

1:15

song hits, and now that luster was

1:18

wearing off. His last two shows

1:20

were nominated for a handful of Tony's,

1:22

but they were not the smash, financial and

1:24

culture defining hits he'd had with Low

1:26

up through Camelot in nineteen sixty

1:29

the chased Alan jay Lerner needed

1:31

to get with the times. He needed

1:34

to listen to his

1:36

assistant. I think you see where

1:38

this is going. His assistant wanted

1:41

him to adapt Lolita

1:43

by Vladimir Tobakov, and I quickly want

1:45

to give a huge shout out to one

1:47

of the top keepers of Lolita history,

1:49

writer Sarah Weinman, who we talked to last week

1:52

for collecting a lot of this information on

1:54

the musical back in article

1:56

for Vulture, which I will link in the show notes.

1:59

So did Alan j Lerner understand

2:02

Lolita? Uh?

2:05

I think that the story of Lolita is much more

2:07

pertinent now than when the film was made.

2:09

Humbard is such a tragic, flawed and misplaced

2:12

romantic lost in post World War

2:14

two. They're countless men like him

2:16

over forty who find it impossible to wake up

2:18

in the morning and not blink once or twice

2:21

at the life facing them. Oh,

2:23

absolutely incredible. Do you ever

2:25

just hear how any person who has

2:27

ever adapted this book talks about the

2:29

story and your head just like explodes

2:32

like that scene in Scanners. I can't.

2:35

It's unbelievable. But okay,

2:37

who's collaborating on this with Mr

2:40

Lerner? It's a composer named John

2:42

Barry, a suave Englishman

2:44

most famous for writing the theme song to James

2:47

Bond. He was in his late thirties. To

2:49

Learners fifty one or Is Learner

2:51

would describe it a contemporary

2:53

man go off. Also

2:56

on Learner's team is producer Norman

2:58

Twain, who was notorious in theater and

3:00

film for being a gigantic personality

3:02

with big hits and bigger misses.

3:05

For an idea of what his vibe is, here's a

3:07

quote pulled from the Associated Press piece

3:09

on the auditions for Lolita in

3:11

nineteen seventy. We've

3:14

got to have a girl who makes a man forget the

3:16

moral conventions of society,

3:18

but it's got to be a complete mental situation.

3:21

If Lolita is five ft five with a great

3:23

figure, it would be perfectly normal

3:25

for from Bear to go after her. The

3:27

musical was to be called Lolita

3:30

My Love, and it's the last attempt

3:32

at an adaptation Vladimir Tobakov

3:35

would ever sign off on before his passing

3:37

in ninety seven. By this time,

3:39

he was living in Montro Palace in Switzerland,

3:42

working on new novels full time and

3:44

enjoying the residuals that Lolita continued

3:46

to rake in. He is, as he was

3:49

during the Kubrick movie, strongly averse

3:51

to the idea of an actual twelve year old

3:53

playing the part night after night, calling

3:56

it sinful and immoral.

3:58

This is, according to ken Endel bomb book

4:01

not since Carrie this statement aside,

4:04

Nabokov appears to have had all the faith

4:06

in the world, and Mr my fair Lady at first

4:09

saying the following, Mr Lerner

4:11

is a most talented and excellent classicist.

4:14

If you have to make a musical version of Lolita,

4:16

he is the one to do it well.

4:19

Keep in mind Nabakov also said that about

4:21

Kubrick two back in the sixties. So

4:23

let's see where this goes. Back to those

4:25

low La auditions in November nineteen

4:27

seventy, dozens of girls as young as

4:29

ten and oldest twenty one went

4:32

to the Billy Rose Theater to audition

4:34

for the head Hanchos and Sarah Whyneman's

4:36

piece kind of distills the vibe at

4:38

these auditions. A thirteen year old audition

4:40

ee said the following to a reporter.

4:43

I wouldn't like to be Lolita, but

4:46

I'd still like to play the part. And

4:48

a lot of those auditioning legally had

4:51

to be accompanied by a parent, and the parents

4:53

also had takes.

4:57

There's a wickedness wherever you go. It's

4:59

just lucky my daughter only play accit. The

5:02

audition process sounded similar to that of

5:04

Stanley Koprick and James B. Harris's

5:07

a lot of young girls, bodies being appraised,

5:09

a lot of extremely personal questions.

5:12

Don't wear makeup next time, said one of the producers

5:14

to a girl who was auditioning. I wanted

5:16

to look sexy. The girl replied, you

5:19

look sexy anyways, he said, yikes.

5:22

The actor eventually selected for the role of

5:24

Lolita was named Annette Farah,

5:26

now a casting director who goes by Chris

5:28

Gilmore. We're gonna be talking to her today

5:30

and at the time, she was fifteen years

5:33

old and from a Los Angeles family. More

5:35

interested in her music career than being Lolita,

5:37

but being offered the lead in an Alan

5:39

J. Lerner musical that was grounds

5:42

to be launched into superstardom,

5:44

Honey, and so she jumped at the opportunity and

5:46

was willing to relocate to New York from Los

5:49

Angeles with her sister. She had had

5:51

a guest spot on The Brady Bunch earlier in

5:53

nineteen seventy and had sung a number

5:55

of obscure but very catchy teen

5:57

hits in the nineteen sixties, and had a promise

5:59

in rear Ahead, including this incredible

6:02

B side I found on YouTube. She's saying nineteen

6:04

seven, You're a dumb dumb

6:17

iconic stuff. Everyone go to YouTube

6:19

and listen to You're a Dumb dumb. So at fifteen,

6:22

Farah told the Associated Press her

6:25

take on the story of Lolita. Oh

6:27

no, there's nothing dirty about what

6:30

Humber does. It's not a crime.

6:33

In the ant umbar is cured. It's just a

6:35

love story. Interestingly,

6:37

she had not read the book at the time of being

6:40

cast, so this impression she's

6:42

sharing is an impression made from

6:44

the loretto of the musical. Other

6:46

leading roles included Dorothy Lowden,

6:48

as Charlotte Hayes. She'd later originate

6:51

the role of Mrs Hannigan and Annie and

6:53

as Humbert the Shakespearean actor

6:55

John Neville. He'd also been in the

6:57

mix for the Cooper adaptation, and at

6:59

least physically and in terms of stuffy

7:02

englishness, seemed like a good fit for the part.

7:04

Rehearsals began with February one

7:07

previews at the Schubert Theater in Philadelphia.

7:10

In mind and producer Norman Twain

7:12

was hyping it up, even

7:15

as things behind the scenes remained very

7:17

chaotic. As choreography, music,

7:19

and story remained in fairly constant

7:22

flux, Twaine assured local paper, The

7:24

Camden Courier Post that Lolita

7:26

My Love would be the best thing

7:29

Alan's ever done, including

7:31

My Fair Lady, and that Alan

7:33

J. Lerner and John Baba Baba

7:36

Ba Barry was that funny, okay,

7:38

that they would be even better than Learner

7:40

and Low had been, no better

7:42

than Rogers and Hammerstein, no

7:45

better than Olivia Benson

7:47

and Elliott Stabler. I've never

7:49

watched s VU, but but I thought that

7:51

that might hit for people. When asked

7:54

what Lolita My Love was like as

7:56

a show, Twain said the following.

7:59

No contraver see, no nudity, no

8:01

four letter words, nothing which

8:03

compromises the taste of membo.

8:07

The moral is that total obsession

8:09

with anything destroys

8:11

a person, whether the obsessions a little

8:13

girl or a philosophy here. Okay,

8:16

oh wait, you've not done. Could

8:18

I be involved with a nim fete? Yeah?

8:20

It could be, absolutely. There are certain

8:23

types of girls, little girls FETs,

8:26

but all else being equal, would turn me

8:28

on if you met them in a motel

8:30

by chance. But I haven't fallen yet. I've

8:33

been playing it pretty straight. My wife prefers

8:35

it that way. So before the

8:37

short history of Lolita my Love

8:39

was complete, the lead a net Farah

8:41

would be replaced for reasons we'll discussed

8:44

today. The show was completely

8:46

reworked multiple times, and

8:48

it had lost nearly a million dollars

8:51

in ninety one money in production

8:53

costs. A playbill from the show's final

8:55

run in Boston at the Schubert Theater proclaimed

8:58

a two act sweeping produce auction that

9:00

started in Ramsdale with songs

9:02

like in the Broken Promised Land

9:04

of fifteen and Dante,

9:07

Petrarch and Poe all the way through

9:09

Humbert Sweeping Lolita away to the Betty

9:11

By Motel and to Beardsley

9:14

with Quilties, showstopper March

9:16

Out of My Life. I'm not kidding.

9:19

Nabokov never saw the show.

9:21

He was enthusiastic at first, but much

9:23

like his experience with the Cooper adaptation,

9:26

his enthusiasm for the adaptation wilted

9:29

over time. By October ninety

9:31

one, he told The New York Times the following

9:34

if they're going to do it, someday, they're going

9:37

to do it, so I had better be around when they

9:39

do it, not only to criticize the thing, but also

9:41

to explain that I have nothing to do with

9:43

it. So why haven't we heard

9:45

about Lolita, My love, the show

9:48

that brought you my least favorite line

9:50

in all of music? Who is

9:52

the piper who likes them? Post?

9:55

Because it never debuted

9:57

on Broadway? This is lowly to podcast.

10:28

Welcome back to Lolita Podcast. I

10:30

am your host, Jamie Loftus, and today

10:32

I think we're going to get about as close

10:34

to some levity as this series

10:37

is going to get, because we are talking

10:39

about Lolita on stage

10:41

now. Saying this episode is going to be a little lighter

10:43

doesn't mean that there isn't still a fair

10:45

amount of trauma being discussed this

10:48

is Lolita Podcast, and there certainly

10:50

is. But today we're talking about the Broadway

10:53

musical of nineteen seventy one by Alan

10:55

Jay Lerner one adaptation

10:57

by Edward Albe, as well as the mattering

11:00

of international ballets, stage

11:02

shows, and operas in a recent attempted

11:04

revival of Lolita My Love in New

11:07

York, which spoiler alert is

11:09

the first adaptation of Lolita ever

11:12

to be directed by a woman. I'll

11:14

say it, Lolita does not work

11:17

on stage, or hasn't,

11:19

I should say, but the reasons why fall

11:21

into the same trappings that most adaptations

11:23

of Lolita don't, but in a uniquely

11:26

theatrical way. I think the reason that

11:28

the two Broadway failures that we're gonna be talking

11:30

about the most specifically rank as

11:32

less harmful in terms of adaptation is

11:35

because one wouldn't debut on Broadway at

11:37

all, and the other would barely make

11:39

it out of the starting gate. They were completely

11:41

panned, and they never really got the chance to do

11:44

much cultural harm to anybody, except,

11:46

of course, the girls and women playing

11:48

the titular role. Another pattern that

11:50

is well established that will be devoting

11:52

an entire episode two in a couple

11:54

of weeks. Today, we're gonna be speaking to Chris

11:57

Gilmore, formerly a net Farah, who

11:59

played Lolita in the nineteen seventy one musical,

12:01

Blanche Baker, who played Lolita in the one

12:04

adaptation by Edward Albi, and Jacob

12:07

Holder, the executive director of the Edward

12:09

F. Alby Foundation. In this episode,

12:12

I think you'll notice a few trends solidifying

12:14

in the adaptations of Lolita, carrying

12:17

over from the Stanley Kubrick movie that have a

12:19

lot in common and are also very

12:21

uniquely of their time. So with that in

12:23

mind, let's return to nineteen

12:26

seventy. My parents are in elementary

12:28

school and a few hours south of where they lived.

12:30

Lolita my Love was in production preparing

12:33

for a February debut in Philly. The

12:35

cast dealt with constant content

12:37

changes, and the show debuted to

12:40

uh these reviews in

12:47

its present form, which will doubtlessly

12:49

be drastically altered before it leaves down.

12:51

The show is only a ghost of Nabokov's

12:53

comic masterpiece. The

12:58

kindest thing that can be said out the musical is

13:00

that it's a disaster. Yeah,

13:05

by all accounts it didn't work. This February

13:07

shipwreck made the original March

13:09

thirty intended Broadway debut

13:12

more or less impossible. Learner

13:14

and Barry had a ton of overhaul to do

13:16

and would need a successful preview to go off

13:19

without a hit. Before hitting a New York stage,

13:21

producer Norman Twain went into damage

13:24

control mode, saying that quote,

13:26

the show didn't work technically, and when things

13:28

don't work technically, nothing goes right. I

13:31

can see the backstage crew rolling

13:33

their eyes from here. That was

13:35

not the problem. It was the material,

13:37

and after the failure of the Philadelphia shows

13:40

critically, with this constant material change,

13:42

we see some of the key players get

13:44

shuffled out. Director Tito Capo Bianco

13:47

is replaced by British director Noel

13:49

Willman, and Annette Farah leaves

13:51

the production as Lolita Now.

13:53

The reason given by the production at the time for

13:55

firing Farah, who had been styled to look

13:58

very similar to Sue Lyon and kuprisill Alita,

14:00

was detailed in a gossip column of the time

14:02

which was unearthed by Sarah Weinman. It

14:04

says that Pharaoh was quote looking

14:07

twenty four when she was supposed to be sixteen

14:09

unquote. The reality, according

14:11

to Chris Gilmore, was very different.

14:14

More in that shortly after Fara departs,

14:17

auditions for Lolita are held again,

14:19

including a young Sissy spacect but Denise

14:21

Nickerson is the choice for the role in

14:23

spite of Nabokov's initial anxieties

14:26

of casting a girl of Dolores Hayes's

14:28

real age in the book, Nickerson was only

14:30

thirteen. During that next round of previews,

14:33

she was seventy five pounds and four ft nine,

14:35

and her hair was styled into the blonde

14:37

bob evocative of lions. And

14:40

if Denise Nickerson's name sounds familiar,

14:42

it's because she plays Violet Beauregard

14:44

in The Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate

14:46

Factory and had just finished shooting shortly

14:49

before taking the role. Nickerson sadly passed

14:51

away last year, but with the changes in

14:53

cast and libretto made the show

14:55

launched again that March in

14:57

Boston at the Schubert Theater and in only

15:00

lasted nine performances.

15:02

Luckily for us, or put a pin

15:05

in that maybe not, but for my purpose is lucky.

15:07

A recording from the audio board from Boston

15:09

is preserved in full, giving us recordings

15:12

of the songs and an idea of what

15:14

the show sounded like, although the extensive

15:16

dance numbers, yes you hurt that

15:18

right, remain lost to history.

15:21

And no matter how many giggles of enjoyment

15:23

you hear from the nineties seventies Bostonians

15:25

in the clips you're gonna hear today, the reviews

15:27

in Boston were just as rough.

15:32

I'm afraid it's going to be a case of better never

15:34

than late. Do

15:39

you be taking us first? Are melodrama

15:41

or satire or just a

15:43

dirty musical comedy? Some

15:48

good music and some fine wit, but

15:51

it is done in by the plot. We

15:56

mean style and daste and depth.

15:58

And these are things which al and Jay Lemo's

16:00

idea of theater evidently can no longer

16:03

offer. Oh,

16:06

that last review was from the Harvard Crimson.

16:08

So just imagine like an eighteen year

16:10

old with a suit that's too big saying that.

16:12

So Lolita, my love flops in Philly,

16:15

it flops in Boston. And Lerner

16:17

was desperate to save the production. He rewrote

16:20

the show again twice, renamed

16:22

it Light of My Life, which seems like kind

16:24

of a lateral move in terms of creepy sounding

16:26

titles, and he tried to recast the leads

16:29

again, pursuing Rex Harrison for

16:31

Humbert. Rex Harrison was in My Fair Lady

16:33

and Haley Mills for Lolita,

16:36

and Haley Mills at this point was too old

16:38

for the role by quite a bit, at age twenty

16:40

four, and she had already turned down the role

16:42

of Lolita in Stanley Koper's production

16:44

nearly ten years earlier. Nabokov

16:47

had this to say about Fara and Nickerson,

16:49

the two Lolita's cast in a musical.

16:51

He had never seen both girls,

16:54

the one they fired and the one who replaced her, were

16:56

awful little boozym me girls, the wrong

16:58

type altogether. Uh

17:01

what. By the end, Lolita

17:03

My Love had hemorrhaged a million dollars

17:06

and it never debuted on Broadway. Everyone was

17:08

ready to move on, and they did. But don't

17:10

cry for this musical, because I think you

17:12

will understand why it flopped when we give

17:14

the one surviving bootleg recording

17:16

a little listen. This adaptation

17:19

is so extremely off the mark

17:21

that it was genuinely hard for me to

17:23

keep up with the whiplash of the tone. Like if

17:25

you thought the Kubrick adaptation was being

17:28

played too much for comedy. You have not heard

17:30

anything. This musical isn't just a

17:32

comedy of manners. Humbered Humbert

17:35

is presented as a full on comedic

17:37

hero and Lolita and My Love never made

17:39

it far enough into production to ever

17:41

release a cast album. So what's being

17:44

pulled from here is a rehearsal that's

17:46

taking place in front of an audience in Boston,

17:49

my home city. And please

17:51

do not judge them too harshly for how

17:53

much they seem to love this. There's a lot of

17:55

adaptation changes that were popularized

17:58

in Kubrick's Lolita that follow through

18:00

to this adaptation. Everyone calls

18:02

the lead Lolita instead of Dolly

18:04

or Dolores. Quilty has a hugely

18:07

inflated presence, and Humbert

18:09

is a long standing teacher, But the bizarreness

18:11

of this adaptation is uniquely

18:14

its own. It opens with Humbert

18:16

Humbert talking to the audience at the beginning

18:18

of the show, explaining what nymphets are

18:20

to us. The stage

18:22

format does make it much easier for Humbert

18:24

to break the fourth wall and speak to the audience

18:27

directly, and this show does take smart advantage

18:29

of that at times. How

18:32

many of you have ever committed a murder?

18:35

I under it surprisingly

18:38

unsurprising experience. For

18:42

eighteen years of my quality, I have been a teacher.

18:46

Every morning while shaving, I invariedly looked

18:48

in the mirror and said, Humbert,

18:51

you look exactly like a teacher. The

18:54

day after the murder, I looked

18:56

in the mirror and I said, humble

18:59

you, she'll look exactly. Humbert

19:03

says he was teaching at a girls school in Switzerland,

19:05

had to break down, then goes to Ramsdale, Vermont,

19:07

to give lectures at the local college. Now

19:10

where in New England Ramsdale is kind

19:12

of varies depending on the adaptation. It's

19:14

like New Hampshire for Kubrick Vermont.

19:16

In this adaptation, who knows why, but Humbert

19:18

does mention to us that he got divorced.

19:25

Humbert goes to Ramsdale and meets Charlotte,

19:27

who brings up her deceased husband Harold and

19:29

shows Humbert her dead husband's gun and

19:32

his ashes. You're married, divorce,

19:34

madam, happily divorced many years ago in

19:36

Paris,

19:39

Oh Harrod magic. There's

19:43

a lot of laughing on this recording,

19:45

and Dorothy Loudden is definitely going for comedy

19:48

with Charlotte here, but also it seems like everybody's

19:50

going for comedy. Denise Nickerson is

19:52

introduced to us as Lolita, and at

19:54

age thirteen, she really does sound

19:57

thirteen, possibly more so than

19:59

anyone who was or played the part. You

20:01

are Lolita, Lola,

20:05

Lolita, there are me,

20:08

and just keep in mind for a reference of how

20:10

old she looked at this time. She plays Violet

20:13

Beauregard in Willy Wonka this same

20:15

exact year. Humbard's journals are

20:17

significantly watered down to keep

20:19

things light, and he sings about Annabel

20:21

to Lolita in the song in the

20:23

Broken Promised Land of fifteen.

20:27

Perhaps it looks more like a little

20:29

girl that I knew many many

20:31

years ago, where Prince

20:35

by the Sea Lolita never learned of Annabel,

20:37

and other adaptations that I know of. So it's

20:39

an interesting deviation, is

20:51

that man upon the side.

20:57

Another repeated trend here is

20:59

that Charlotte so heartlessly treated

21:01

by the script that the audience is trained

21:03

to respond to some really brutal

21:06

lines from Humbert with laughter

21:08

rumbling upstairs like a truck on the

21:10

street. Bursting into my room like

21:13

a horrs and heat that like

21:15

driving out of my sight, my only

21:18

to the light of my life. Humbert

21:20

is preparing a lecture for Charlotte's group

21:22

on the poets. I intend to

21:24

dwell exclusively on Fante fell

21:27

in up with Beatrice when she was nine, pet trot

21:29

Will fell in up with Laura when she was twelve, and

21:31

Edgar Allan Poe married Virginia

21:33

when she was Humbert also

21:35

makes very little effort to conceal his

21:38

true nature in this show, but the people surrounding

21:40

him are written to be so clueless that

21:42

it doesn't seem to matter. For my money, he couldn't

21:45

be more obvious. I won't speak to one of them,

21:47

only to Lolita, and Lolita,

21:49

while remaining and behaving twelve years

21:51

old, is still framed to be a seductress,

21:54

and her quote unquote fluziness

21:57

is often a pause for laugh moment

21:59

as actually, when Quialty is on stage,

22:01

I'd love to see little Lovelica. She

22:03

must have grown. She's sleeping

22:06

out tonight, she

22:09

must have Pulling from kuberc

22:11

here, Quilty comes to Ramsdale and meets

22:13

Humbert. He's famous. His plays are on

22:15

TV, and he's also already familiar

22:18

with the concept of a nymphant infant

22:20

a nymphet by me caps Walker

22:25

say how is your daughter? Gross?

22:28

This is a song called Dante, Petrarch

22:30

and Poe. This song is

22:33

maybe the best and the worst of what all

22:35

of the adaptations have to offer, all said

22:37

and done, you see it is a Lectures

22:39

exclusive plick features poets

22:42

enraptured and captured by creatures.

22:45

Any pue, peasant, pessant,

22:47

you peasant chan them and throw

22:49

them? What else is there to call them but a

22:52

nymphant? Because it's gross and

22:54

awful and trying to make you laugh about

22:56

one of the worst crimes that plagues

22:58

humanity. But it's all so written

23:01

by the same guy who did My Fair

23:03

Lady, and the music is good.

23:06

My head is exploding.

23:12

Who is that viper who likes them

23:15

post viper? Who

23:17

is that viper that

23:19

likes them post diaper?

23:24

Why would you write that this is how

23:26

that song ends?

23:35

I don't know. Back at the house, Charlotte tries to

23:37

seduce Humbert with a show stopping

23:40

number that I'm pretty sure it includes an extensive

23:42

dance routine. But Lolita comes

23:45

home from a party, and she and Humbert immediately

23:47

start flirting. You remind me of a sleepy

23:49

Flamingo. Charlie

23:53

gets a more sympathetic moment than she

23:55

does in other adaptations at this point.

23:57

She expresses regret at coming to rm

24:00

Stell and expresses her loneliness.

24:02

Lolita then delivers Charlotte's letter, and

24:04

while Lolita is away, Humbert and Charlotte

24:07

get married mother

24:09

Englishman stepfather.

24:12

Humbert, in keeping with being the

24:14

cruelest Humbert in this entire adaptation

24:17

catalog actually maybe put

24:19

a pin in that until later in the episode. But Humbert

24:22

then sings a literal song about

24:24

how much he hates being married to Charlotte

24:27

for only twenty days.

24:29

She talked and talked days me

24:31

woked and wopped in the rain. That wouldn't

24:33

head kill my toes began to web

24:36

following that, he sings a whole song

24:39

about all the ways he wants to

24:41

kill her. I

24:43

would never have the heart

24:46

to shoot her with a gun. The

24:49

way that this song is just presented

24:51

as women right with

24:54

my hands, all with the puta

24:57

of my life, with the all

24:59

a night baby

25:07

is at this point in the show, especially where

25:10

Humbert's word is taken at face value.

25:13

Here, he's the comedic hero, the

25:15

maligned husband with the loud,

25:18

emasculating wife who's preventing

25:20

him from doing what he wants to. I

25:22

would never have Poisin.

25:28

Charlotte finds Humbert's journal as normal.

25:30

She's furious, But then this has also played

25:32

for comedy. How don't we ever given

25:35

Charlotte what

25:40

ship? This

25:44

happens right after she realizes

25:47

her new husband wants to sexually

25:49

abuse her twelve year old daughter. I

25:51

mean, at this point, I'm not surprised,

25:53

but Jesus, Charlotte gets

25:55

hit by the car. Humbert is informed, and

25:57

then the crowd laughs and laughs as he says

26:00

the reprise about the song about him wanting

26:02

to kill her. He gets a hotel room and tells

26:04

the camp not to mention Charlotte with death, picks

26:06

Lolita up and takes her to the betty

26:09

By Hotel. Intermission.

26:15

We're at the betty By Hotel, which

26:17

is the same thing as the Enchanted Hunter's Hotel.

26:20

Lolita says that Charlotte is going

26:22

to and

26:24

stre but

26:27

she doesn't use the incest word as

26:29

she does in the book. Now we get a lot more

26:31

Lolita in this adaptation than we do in

26:33

some others, and to be fair, we do see

26:35

different sides of her emotionally. Shortly

26:38

after getting to the hotel, she says that she wants

26:40

to see her mom and leave the hotel.

26:42

In response, Humbert sings her a song called

26:45

tell Me, Tell Me to try to seduce

26:47

her into not wanting to go home now.

26:57

In the book, this is the scene where Humbert

27:00

first rapes Lolita, and

27:02

the musical is wise enough to reference

27:04

it without showing anything. The

27:06

way Humbert describes the moment to the audience,

27:09

though, is a daunable

27:11

face on my naked chest. She

27:14

told me I was not the first.

27:17

Oh, how innocent is the Lord? He

27:20

thought he was punishing a sinner, the

27:22

only lessoned my do. It's

27:25

like that, And when she learns that her mother has

27:27

been killed, she has a far more

27:30

expressive outburst at him than in

27:32

the book.

27:34

You Never

27:40

Get You to Get Me?

27:45

Why the women always have to cry?

27:48

They go straight to Beardsley, skipping the entire

27:50

road trip. Lolita tries to bribe him

27:52

about the play. Immediately says, I

27:54

love you to increase the likelihood of getting

27:56

what she wants. The scene with Lolita's

27:59

head mistress on whether she can do the play or

28:01

not is included, but it's turned up to

28:03

an eleven. The headmistress gives

28:05

Humbert an ultimatum that he must either

28:07

let Dolly do the play or go to

28:09

a weird class with her two nights a week

28:12

where they get to the root of her sexual trauma.

28:14

Like in Koper's adaptation, Quilty

28:17

is very present in Beardsley. We

28:19

see him at the school, and Humbert is well aware

28:21

that he's around. He's not on the margins or

28:23

in disguise as in other versions. Tells

28:26

me about the cast. They must be

28:28

quite young, butler

28:32

on the inside.

28:36

In fact, there's a whole scene with Quilty

28:38

and Lolita. Quilty openly flirt

28:41

with her while they're at school, and then he sings

28:43

a song called March Out of My Life about

28:45

his own tortured attraction to Lolita.

28:48

Meanwhile, Lolita is portrayed as far

28:50

more outwardly devious than she

28:53

is in Nabokov's book. She blackmails

28:55

Humbert. She says she'll tell her friends about him

28:58

if he doesn't pay up. He's portrayed sympath athetically

29:00

as a man who is losing touch

29:02

with reality and being tricked by a

29:04

girl who seems to be doing absolutely

29:07

fine. You cannot torment me

29:09

like this. I love you too much?

29:14

Is that all you have to say? I don't

29:16

want to be loved so much fun

29:20

at least for me. But in this scene,

29:22

for all of this musical's glaring,

29:24

glaring failures, I really

29:26

liked the song that Lolita sings here at

29:28

the height of her outward anger at Humbert.

29:31

It's called all you can do is tell me you

29:33

love me. That's all you can do

29:36

is give me in prison and tell me

29:38

it's love. I tell you it

29:40

is all I can do. Think

29:43

about you. Now,

29:45

Humbert is still framed as pathetic, and

29:48

she's framed as a mastermind. But

29:50

I thought this was a solid cathartic look

29:52

into Lolita's mind. Humbert

29:54

gives the idea to leave town, and they leave

29:56

Beardsley, just as in the book. She

29:58

gets away at three years pass Humbert

30:01

runs into Lolita's old friend Mona

30:03

from Beardsley. Fun fact, this is played by

30:06

Judy Garland's daughter Laura left. Mona

30:08

tells her that Lolita ran away with Quilty.

30:11

Humbert kills Quilty before going

30:13

to see Lolita, and Lolita has

30:15

just heard about Quiality's murder. When Humbert

30:18

arrives, Lolita refers to Quilty's

30:20

attempt to coerce her into being in pornography

30:23

as group activity, but she says

30:25

that she forgives him

30:28

what he was fun. At the end,

30:30

Humbert is arrested in front of Lolita and

30:33

the show is over, just like in the Kuper movie,

30:35

Lolita Lives. Yea. I

30:39

mean, what else is there to say?

30:41

It's all right there that this was truly

30:43

a springtime for hitler attempt

30:46

to make one of the most hideous crimes a

30:48

person can commit into a lighthearted musical

30:50

that blames the child that, in the case

30:52

of Denise Nickerson, looks and sounds

30:55

very much like a child for her own

30:57

abuse. Koper's adaptation looks

30:59

deeply nuanced by comparison, and

31:01

the story behind the scenes was just as

31:04

unsettling. I mentioned a net Farah

31:06

earlier, the original Lolita in

31:08

Lolita My Love and the girl who appears

31:10

on the poster even after being replaced.

31:13

We'll be talking to her at length in our episode

31:15

on the actors who have played Lolita in the

31:17

past. But I wanted to share this here because

31:19

in the story of this musical, she is generally

31:22

reduced to a footnote in the already

31:24

hard to access history of the show. And

31:27

that's not fair because the press clipping

31:29

I quoted earlier about her looking

31:31

twenty four more than sixteen as the reason

31:33

for her dismissal was not the case at

31:36

all. Parah would have been fifteen

31:38

going on sixteen at this time, a minor

31:40

with very little control over how

31:43

she was styled. She's now a

31:45

casting director and producer in Los Angeles

31:47

who goes by Chris Gilmore, and she has a

31:49

new project called Blood Pageant starring

31:52

Snoop Dog. I know she rocks. We

31:54

caught up over the summer and she explained

31:56

the circumstances of her dismissal from

31:58

Lolita, My love. Had

32:01

you read the book before going into the show

32:03

or was or had you seen the movie from

32:05

the sixties or so? I

32:07

never read the book And when I Allen

32:10

asked me that, I said,

32:12

no, Mr Lerner, I never read the book,

32:15

and he said, well don't, He

32:17

said, since you didn't, I want you to

32:19

put the spin on it, you know that you and he

32:22

worked with me a little. He counseled me, and

32:24

you know, we did work through the problem

32:27

that I had never dated. I was so virginal

32:29

and perfect with that that it

32:31

was something that I wasn't, you know,

32:33

going to hide from him. I was saying, well, you know, approaching

32:36

this, here's my thought. The

32:38

There was one scene was the most risque scene

32:41

we had, um where I had a

32:43

little blue nightgown. It was short, but

32:45

it looked like a dress and you know,

32:47

thank god, it wasn't like see through or anything,

32:50

but it looked like a little blue baby doll dress.

32:52

It was really cute and so,

32:54

um, I'm supposed to be in a

32:56

motel room with Humbert. Humbert,

32:59

I take my hand, and believe me, they rehearsed

33:01

this thing so many times because it was so important

33:04

to them. How my hand

33:06

raised from the bed to like get my

33:08

finger and call him in enough

33:11

and then the lights go out. So they never showed

33:13

two people getting together anything. But it was

33:15

very um it was like a ballet

33:18

and uh, you know because because I well,

33:21

well I'm jumping ahead though, I go, what's what's

33:23

the snaps on the top of my nightgown. What

33:25

they had this? What did they do to it? And

33:28

nobody wanted to tell me. And

33:30

this is a hell of a way to hit it on

33:32

an actress, but you know, um,

33:34

I went around and then somebody said,

33:37

well, Mr Learner will come in, and so he told

33:39

me, well, the snaps are in the top because

33:41

you're gonna drop your nightgown. You're

33:43

gonna rip it off and drop it in that

33:45

scene rather than I said, but yeah, but we

33:48

rehearsed for three days how to lift

33:50

my finger to call him to the bed. You

33:52

wanted it sensual, you wanted a certain

33:54

way, and now all of a sudden, I'm not gonna lift

33:56

my finger. You know, I was I

33:59

trained method Meisner, comedy

34:01

improm I added all I sang

34:04

uh. And yet they

34:06

they wanted me to be a stripper too,

34:09

And there's nothing wrong with strippers, God

34:12

bless him, but I wasn't a stripper and I

34:14

shouldn't have had to be a stripper. I mean, you almost

34:16

feel guilty, like you're killing somebody

34:18

to walk away from it. And

34:21

so I had this big conflict inside

34:23

because everything inside of me

34:25

said, I don't want to drop this outfit

34:28

in front of hundreds of people. Well,

34:30

you're a kid, you're fifteen, maybe

34:32

sixteen, and that's not a reasonable request

34:35

for a child, and it's demeaning

34:38

to me. It almost it

34:40

almost, um, you know, adulterates

34:42

the fact that I'm a singer and actor. And

34:45

if that's what people come for, then

34:47

they're not coming for the rest of the

34:50

art, you know. So I

34:52

cried, and then I called my agent and I see him.

34:54

He was on the West coast and he said, I'll be here tomorrow.

34:57

I'm dropping everything. Um, he's not with him

34:59

anymore. But his name was Ron. Ron was amazing,

35:01

and so he flew to the coast. He said,

35:03

this isn't in your contract. They can't do this to

35:05

you, and you're a minor. And

35:08

he had to talk with them and they said, but we have to

35:10

add this hair has big box

35:12

office seals. We want this, and she won't

35:14

be naked, she'll have a sea through body stalking

35:17

on. Well, I don't know what the difference

35:19

is really. I mean, if I know

35:21

and I could see your breasts and I could see your cha

35:23

cha and everything else, then you're naked. You

35:25

know, it doesn't matter to see through body

35:28

stalking or not. And so

35:30

I refused, and then I'll

35:32

never forget the producer's last words.

35:34

He said, well you're too virtuous. Thank

35:38

you so much to Chris Gilmore, and we'll be talking

35:40

more about her career and experience

35:42

in Lolita soon. She has had

35:45

a fascinating life so far. So

35:47

there's obviously a lot to unpack with this

35:49

musical. I mean, Piper,

35:52

yes, but also other stuff. We're going to analyze

35:55

Learner's lowly to and I'll bes Lowlita

35:57

together towards the end of this episode.

35:59

But one thing I want to say here is that, in spite

36:01

of all the bad feedback Learner

36:04

rightfully got in response to this show,

36:06

almost none of it had to do with the

36:08

quality of he and Barry's music.

36:10

And I wouldn't call myself a musical theater

36:12

expert, but I was too

36:15

into Phantom of the Opera in middle school, and

36:17

as such I feel qualified to comment

36:19

because a lot of the music in Lolita

36:22

My Love is extremely sticky,

36:25

and that's another reason I'm glad a proper

36:27

cast album never got released. As we're going

36:29

to discuss in future episodes about how

36:31

Lolita and Dolores have been remembered

36:33

in music. One of the most effective ways

36:35

to get bad info into the minds

36:37

of the general public is to make a simple,

36:40

catchy, highly repeatable song about

36:42

it. Dante, Petrarch

36:44

and Poe is one of the most abjectly

36:47

creepy songs I have ever heard,

36:49

but it's been stuck in my head for six

36:51

months against my will. While Lolita

36:54

My Love's Music is an extreme example

36:56

of this, think of other earworms that have

36:58

gotten similar mess edges across and hit

37:01

songs. I literally couldn't possibly

37:03

name them all. It would take all week. I

37:05

mean, off the top of my head, you have every Disney

37:07

Villain song ever you have, like Blurred

37:09

Lines. I'm a militant feminist and I

37:12

listened to that song for an entire summer.

37:14

Really any like legendary seventies

37:16

boomer band has a famous song that is

37:18

an ode to an underage girl as

37:21

an ostensibly consenting party.

37:23

And then think a learner's own

37:25

creepy, immortal hit the song Thank

37:27

Heaven for Little Girls from g

37:31

I hadn't thought about this song in a very long time, and

37:33

so I'm gonna share some of the lyrics

37:35

here. Thank Heaven for Little Girls.

37:38

They grow up in the most delightful

37:40

way. Those little eyes so

37:42

helpless and appealing when they were flashing

37:45

send you crashing through the ceiling

37:48

Nabokov. Why did

37:50

we hire this man? I mean the people selected

37:52

for these adaptations. It's a problem.

37:55

So if you thought that Lolita My

37:57

Love flopping would put Broadway

37:59

off the whole story for another generation,

38:02

you would be incorrect. Just

38:04

ten years later, a

38:06

handful of years after, in a Book of Death, then

38:09

a Book of Estate, that is to say,

38:11

Vera and Dmitrina book off. At that point

38:13

approved playwright Edward Albi

38:15

to do a very different,

38:18

gritty, non musical play adaptation,

38:20

and spoiler alert, it also

38:23

never makes it to Broadway, but for different

38:25

reasons. Allow me to explain and what must

38:27

be one of the best hidden secrets

38:29

of Broadway casting shame Albe's

38:31

Humbert. Humbert is Donald Sutherland,

38:34

I'm not kidding, and his Lolita

38:36

is played by Blanche Baker, who, at the time

38:38

of this production was around twenty four years

38:41

old. Donald Sutherland could not be reached

38:43

for this podcast, but we know about the

38:45

behind the scenes of this production was that, like

38:47

Lolita My Love, it was incredibly tumultuous.

38:50

Albie had the full cooperation of the

38:52

nabookof Estate, but at this point the primary

38:54

contact was in a book off son Dimitri, whose

38:57

track record overseeing adaptations

38:59

was is mixed. This wasn't

39:01

a great period in the career or life

39:04

of Edward Albi, who had gone through a period

39:06

of extreme success with works like

39:08

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf in the nineteen

39:10

sixties eight won a Pulitzer

39:12

in nineteen seventy five for a play called

39:14

Seascape. He was a master of

39:16

dialogue and style, but not

39:19

necessarily of adaptation, albeit

39:21

had some success adapting Carson mccullors

39:24

to the stage, and another with Everything

39:26

in the Garden from a play by Giles Cooper,

39:29

but his attempt to adapt Truman Capote's

39:31

Breakfast at Tiffany's in nineteen sixty six

39:34

never even opened on Broadway, and

39:36

his attempt at Nabukov's Lolita in eighty

39:38

one only ran twelve shows

39:40

before closing. Albie's

39:43

strength was his own voice, a

39:45

leader in the theater of the absurd, who,

39:47

in this Jamie's

39:49

opinion, had such a distinct voice

39:51

that it seemed to kind of chafe with the very distinct

39:54

voice of Nabukov he was trying to adapt.

39:56

Albi was very edgy and very

39:59

sharp, unaff aid to show and simulate

40:01

sex, to shock his audience, the

40:03

same things that Nabokov intentionally

40:05

hid behind curtains of language and deception

40:08

to try and fool his jury into sympathizing

40:11

with the despicable protagonist. Albi's

40:13

interpretation of Humbert leaves no

40:15

question of who he is, and the experience

40:18

of even reading it made

40:20

my skin crawl. The biggest addition

40:22

and change that Albi makes, without

40:24

a doubt, is a character called a certain

40:27

Gentleman, a narrator to the story who

40:29

is meant to be a stand in for Nabokov

40:32

himself, who guides Humbert Humbert

40:34

through the play and exposes him

40:36

to the audience for the monster he is.

40:39

Ordinarily, Humbert is our narrator,

40:42

and he manipulates us into seeing

40:44

the events of Lolita his way.

40:46

Albi takes the route of using the character

40:49

of a certain Gentleman to show us

40:51

how the author of the show is manipulating

40:53

Humbert, who in turn is manipulating

40:56

us the audience. A certain Gentleman

40:58

will say things like tiss tist, tist

41:01

dirty old man. When Humbert says something

41:03

that is clearly reflecting the mindset

41:05

of a child sex abuser, and

41:07

this kind of creates this air of distance

41:10

and annoyance that a certain gentleman

41:13

has with the protagonist. And

41:15

I was pretty fascinated by that choice,

41:18

because I think it helps in some ways and

41:20

in hurts in others. It's definitely

41:22

the clearest tool I've ever seen used to make

41:24

it clear that Humbert is not reliable,

41:27

is not noble, is not an artist.

41:29

But it also strangely works against

41:32

the production by having it made constantly

41:34

clear that another person is making

41:36

Humbert's decisions for him. It almost

41:38

succeeds more in making us question

41:40

the bulk off than the child sexual

41:42

abuser he's writing about. It creates

41:45

a strange amount of distance. It's

41:47

a choice. It's effective in some

41:49

moments and then in others completely

41:51

distances you from Humbert's evilness.

41:54

It's also worth mentioning that Albi was

41:56

suffering from alcoholism rather badly

41:58

at the time of this production, and is constantly

42:00

undergoing rewrites to get the play to where

42:03

it needed to be. Meanwhile, Donald

42:05

Sutherland was rumored to be putting pressure

42:07

on Alby to make Humbert more likable,

42:10

which was definitely not to be. But that is

42:12

another interesting trend in the adaptations.

42:15

Everyone wants to play Humbert until

42:17

they're playing him all sudden done. There

42:19

were a number of different scripts written in this play

42:21

is Quick March to Death in one

42:24

version of which ended up getting published.

42:27

That's the one that I read for this podcast.

42:29

Albe is also the first and to my

42:31

knowledge, the only gay man who

42:33

has worked on a lolit To adaptation at

42:35

the highest level. I got a little more context

42:37

on this show from Jacob Holder, the

42:40

executive director of the Albi Foundation.

42:42

I'll be passed away in and

42:44

over the summer. He talked to me about what

42:46

that play was like and where it fell in

42:49

Albi and Lolita's career.

42:52

You worked with him from oh one uh

42:55

through his death. I

42:57

guess I am looking for I guess some

43:00

perspective on what you

43:03

feel drew him to this

43:05

material, to Lolita in the first

43:07

place. So he got through a

43:10

really bad period in the nine eighties

43:12

where American theaters wouldn't touch his work. But

43:15

Lolita is one of three plays that are really

43:17

seen as the period right before

43:19

his fall from popularity,

43:22

and and the reason I reread

43:24

that piece in the biography to

43:26

make sure that I wasn't. He hated

43:28

when people did too much analyzing

43:31

with his own personal life in terms

43:33

of how that relates to his work, because he didn't believe

43:35

in the concept um and I didn't want to add

43:37

a layer on that he didn't himself suggest,

43:40

but his drinking was out of control during

43:43

that time period, so Lolita, he

43:45

may already noticed his version of it. He

43:47

had intended to be at least a three

43:50

act play, and he

43:52

intended it for it to be over the course

43:55

of two evenings, which when I

43:57

read about that, I've done as much research as

43:59

I like, I could spend any time doing

44:02

trying to find what version would

44:04

have taken two nights. And while I didn't

44:06

do that, I found the original, which is a

44:08

three act version, and I read both

44:10

that and I read what is considered. You

44:12

know what anyone can put on if they wanted

44:14

to, which is the dramas play service acting

44:17

addition, that's to act. But you're

44:19

dealing obviously the question of like how did the

44:21

creators feel about their workforces? But wound

44:24

up occurring the

44:27

nature obviously of their art versus

44:30

commercial sensibility is always going

44:32

to be strongly at war. So if you have a

44:34

producer who's terrified, if you think, okay,

44:37

this is great, this is risking material that

44:39

will bring in an audience. But I

44:41

can't let this thing be three hours long or four

44:43

hours long because it's going to bore everybody and we're gonna

44:45

get reviews. Let's say that this is a whole I'm sure we

44:47

need to make this thing tight. And then you have Donald

44:50

Sutherland, probably in his ego, thinking all

44:52

right, I'm already playing somebody who's going

44:54

to be perceived as horribly reprehensible,

44:56

so I need to make this thing as funny as possible

44:59

or as light as possible, or you know, almost

45:01

I'm going to play it in a way that shows that I'm

45:03

also sort of outside of it and I'm

45:06

uncommenting on it who my performance.

45:08

So, my guests is that there was a

45:10

lack of trust in the material from

45:13

the actor who wanted to show his best,

45:15

because obviously all actors are concerned

45:18

about how they're being perceived, because if it goes

45:20

wrongly, not only could it be perceived

45:22

that the acting is bad, but also you

45:25

know, he who wants to be then associated that the

45:27

last role, as you know, one of the more famous

45:29

pedophiles in the literature, so that

45:31

can impact his career, whereas

45:34

for Edward it would be all about

45:36

getting as much to the brutal truth

45:38

of what this piece is supposed to be communicating.

45:41

But I think that Edward was probably like looking

45:44

for the best possible Broadway producer

45:46

at the time to work with, and it was just not

45:48

a match made in heaven. I guess

45:50

how involved was the in the Book of

45:53

Estate in Um,

45:56

you know, reading through drafts and um

45:58

interacting with play as it

46:00

was developed. As

46:03

far as I got a sense of it, it it wasn't friendly on

46:05

either side. It was very much an

46:07

aggressive thing. But he conceded to

46:10

just changing it to a certain gentleman

46:12

and you know, draw from it what you will, which

46:14

is obviously that it's supposed to be a stand

46:17

in for the writer. The other thing is not only

46:19

is it that you know a C. G or

46:21

the end can be a stand in almost

46:24

an interview, but obviously from

46:26

from moment one in the play he says, this is

46:28

the character of my own creation. So

46:31

you're dealing now also with Will Wait a

46:33

second, how can you how

46:35

can you actually be even at all judgmental

46:38

of this character because this character, essentially

46:40

we're being told it doesn't really exist.

46:43

You do. It's just you at the end

46:45

of the day, it's it's the dark recesses of

46:47

your mind. It's not his. You're

46:49

in control of all of this. And what's fascinating

46:52

is that Edward would have been very aware of

46:54

the rules of you know, you present

46:56

the universe, and you stick to those rules. You

46:59

don't worry about the universe we live in. That's

47:01

for outside the feeder doors. Once you step

47:03

inside the space, forget you,

47:05

forget your more A's, forget your your

47:07

ethical co your ten commandments. It's

47:09

about the universe on stage. You

47:12

know, I don't think he ever did that. He clearly

47:14

didn't do anything with Lolita that

47:16

he truly intended, because there I go

47:18

again where I don't get why he allowed the two accussions

47:21

to be published if he said that was sort of

47:24

the bastard accident at

47:26

the end of this terrible journey to the bad

47:28

producer and a bad actor, Thank

47:31

you so much to Jacob Holder. So

47:34

what happens in this adaptation,

47:36

I won't rehash the whole thing for you, because

47:38

there's no horrifying music. But it's

47:41

very different from Lowly to My Love,

47:43

And I'd like to point out some of the bigger

47:45

subversions from other interpretations.

47:48

For better and for worse. We already

47:50

talked about a certain gentleman who is on

47:52

stage with Humbert for the entire show,

47:54

but there are other elements worth noting as

47:56

well. Having read the play a couple of times,

47:59

it feels pretty clear to me that Nabokov

48:01

and I'll be clash in storytelling

48:03

style. The swears and the forth right sexuality,

48:06

constant references to erections

48:08

on stage, overt racism, and homophobic

48:11

comments to turn an audience against

48:13

a character. These are all very Albi

48:16

style choices, but they're almost certainly

48:18

something that Nabokov would not have

48:20

liked. Now, we'll get to the choices that I think

48:22

Albie makes somewhat effectively in

48:24

a minute, but I just want to lay it out. The show

48:27

is a failure in more ways than not. While

48:29

Albi lets us know that Humbert is an

48:31

irredeemable criminal in no uncertain

48:34

terms, he succeeds in making the rest

48:36

of the characters from the story leagues

48:39

more unlikable than they were in the original

48:41

storytelling, particularly Charlotte

48:44

and Dolores Hayes. Charlotte Hayes

48:46

is explicitly racist in nearly

48:48

every scene she appears in in the Albi

48:51

play, particularly when speaking

48:53

to her black housekeeper Louise, and

48:55

Lolita makes similar comments later

48:58

in the show that are not present in the look.

49:00

They both make anti Semitic comments

49:02

as well, or a certain gentleman when

49:04

this happens, as if to say, isn't that

49:06

awful? I would never say that, and

49:08

it is awful. It's fucking terrible. But

49:11

since this show isn't making us watch

49:13

Humbert manipulate this narrative, we are

49:15

instead watching a certain gentleman

49:17

do that. This succeeds only in making

49:20

us hate Charlotte and Lolita.

49:22

I don't know what Albie is really

49:24

going for here, but the comments that are

49:26

made by these characters are absolutely

49:28

horrific. Now, going back to the book quickly,

49:31

that is not to say that Charlotte does not

49:33

make funked up racial and anti

49:35

Semitic comments in the nbak of book.

49:37

There are several moments where she hints

49:39

at anti Semitism. In particular,

49:42

and these are obviously worth singling out and

49:44

criticizing. So I wanted to share a

49:46

quick insight on that topic from

49:48

Dana Dragonoiu, a Nabucovian

49:50

we spoke with in episode two, about

49:53

the comments that Charlotte makes in the

49:55

book, something that I certainly

49:57

didn't pick up on my first you

49:59

know, several reads of Lolita, but

50:02

the references to you

50:04

know, his feelings on anti Semitism,

50:07

Yes, I mean um,

50:11

Um, he was very progressive

50:13

on race for a man is

50:16

of his time, like exceptionally so

50:19

and um, in part he

50:21

inherited that from his father. Uh

50:24

So, Nabokov himself comes from a

50:26

very kind of Caucasian

50:28

aristocratic, upper

50:30

middle class um background.

50:33

But his father, UM was

50:36

very close friends with a lot of Jewish intellectuals,

50:39

and his father put his career on

50:41

the line and even lost a

50:43

lot by reporting

50:46

very fearlessly on the on

50:49

the Mendel Bailis affair. So

50:52

his own father championed

50:55

Jewish Jewish

50:57

causes for the entirety of his

50:59

life. Um. It is

51:02

for that reason that Nabokov's are able

51:04

to sail on one of the last boats

51:06

sailing out of France because

51:09

the Jewish league had paid for them in

51:11

in recognition of what the father had done,

51:14

and Nabokov himself marries a Jewish

51:17

woman in spite of the fact that he knew

51:19

that the female members of his

51:21

family would not approve of it. Thank

51:24

you again to Dana. So Edward

51:26

Albee is not inventing this within

51:28

Charlotte Hayes, but he is turning it up

51:31

to an eleven and using every tool

51:33

at his disposal to get the audience

51:35

to actively root for Charlotte's

51:37

demise, And the way I was reading it by

51:39

the time she's killed, it's a relief.

51:41

Albeit seems to be using in sensitive

51:44

language and views in his characters to get

51:46

you to root for a child sexual abuser

51:48

to murder them, which is a moral

51:51

hedge maze I wasn't even aware existed.

52:08

There is a lot to be said about how I'll be

52:11

treated race in his work. He

52:13

both during his life and later with his

52:16

estate, has been resistant to casting black

52:18

actors in some of his greatest works,

52:20

especially Who's Afraid of Virginia

52:22

Wolf, And this was a decision that was widely

52:25

criticized and eventually overturned.

52:27

So there's a ton to talk about there, and

52:29

about racism in casting on Broadway

52:31

in general, that I don't have time to tackle in

52:33

this episode, but I would start by referring

52:36

you to a piece by writer Kyle Turner

52:38

called Who's Afraid of White Fragility.

52:40

That's a good place to start if you're interested

52:42

in learning more. I will link that in

52:44

the notes. Albie does succeed in

52:47

making it the clearest of all

52:49

of the adaptations. I've encountered that

52:51

Humbert. Humbert is an unreliable

52:54

narrator and a despicable person,

52:56

but he still fails to bring Lolita

52:58

to the forefront in any meaningful

53:01

way. Let me give you some examples of what

53:03

I'm talking about here. Here is an

53:05

exchange from the play. Humbert

53:07

says that darling child is

53:09

a temptress. She is

53:11

an infant. Then

53:14

a certain gentleman replies, no,

53:16

really, she looks like an ordinary little

53:18

girl to me, he turns to the audience.

53:21

Yes, I'm sure she does, and to

53:23

you too as well, I dare say,

53:25

unless unless

53:28

I am not alone, Unless

53:30

there is one of you out there like me, one

53:33

of you who knows, one of you who senses

53:35

the beauty, the thrill of the danger.

53:39

Is there a pedophile in the house? That's

53:45

right? That line ends with parentheses

53:48

loud hiss. The

53:52

biggest change from the source material, besides

53:54

the addition of a certain gentleman, is probably

53:57

Charlotte's death. Instead of the incredibly

54:00

convenient death that Humbert, Humbert

54:02

constructs where she is hit by a car

54:04

at just the right moment. Albe has

54:06

Charlotte pull a gun on Humbert when

54:08

she learns of his diaries that are condemning

54:11

her and planning to rape Lolita.

54:13

While doing so, In this version, she

54:15

falls down the stairs and dies of

54:17

a head injury, and the impact of

54:20

Charlotte dying right in front of us is

54:22

much different than what we experience in

54:24

the book and some of the other adaptations.

54:26

In a roundabout way, seeing her

54:29

die before our eyes validates

54:31

Humbert's claim that her death was a

54:33

convenient win for him and gets

54:35

rid of all of the ambiguity and suspicion

54:38

of Humbert and questions that arrived

54:40

from Charlotte's death happening outside

54:42

of the jurors plain site. We

54:44

see other things like Charlotte's funeral

54:47

in detail, Humbert telling a certain gentleman

54:49

that he intends to abduct Lolita,

54:52

and we also see this I'm not kidding.

54:54

Charlotte sits straight up in her coffin,

54:56

calls Humbert a molester, and

54:58

says she will see him in Hell. I

55:01

especially don't like how this adaptation

55:03

treats Lolita. For me, the

55:06

intense detailed descriptions of

55:08

Humbert's intent to abuse her, the

55:10

actual nudity on stage of

55:12

Blanche Baker or Lolita, as well

55:14

as a certain gentleman asking Humbert

55:16

how she was quote unquote indicates

55:19

that i'll Be clearly wants to confront

55:21

the audience with how disgusting

55:24

Humbert's crimes are, but still manages

55:26

to paint out Lolita as the seductress

55:28

in the process, and even exploits

55:30

her body to make his point. This just

55:32

did not work. We understand

55:35

Humbert's monstrosity, but the way i'll

55:37

be writes, we are not encouraged to have

55:39

any empathy for his victim. You can read

55:41

it if you really want to, but it's

55:43

like gross. It just it goes

55:46

so far in the other direction that even

55:48

reading it on the page was deeply unsettling,

55:51

because it just feels exploitative

55:53

and understands that it's exploitative,

55:55

but keeps doubling and doubling and doubling

55:57

down. There are some scenes where it truly

55:59

just felt to me like Edward Albe was trying

56:02

to think of the most disgusting,

56:04

gross, horrific thing he could think of

56:07

and then just made someone do that.

56:09

Final thing that struck me about this adaptation

56:11

was the final time that we see Lolita

56:14

on stage. At the end of a scene, Humbert,

56:17

still accompanied by a certain gentleman,

56:19

literally will's Lolita away

56:22

before going to Quilty's mansion to murder

56:24

him. After we've seen her seventeen and

56:26

pregnant. Have this interaction with Humbert,

56:28

Lolita fades from the story, just

56:30

as she does in the book, but in a much more

56:33

self aware way than we see at other

56:35

points. Here's a bit from this scene.

56:37

Lolita says, you can tell them all about

56:39

what I'm like in bed, and he can tell you.

56:42

Humbert replies, you are vanishing,

56:46

and the stage directions indicate that the lights

56:48

begin to go down on Lolita. Lolita

56:50

says, huh, pardon, and her spotlight

56:53

continues to fade. Humbert says

56:56

goodbye. Lolita. Hey,

56:58

Lolita, says humber It says,

57:00

you have disappeared, and by

57:02

this time he is right. Lolita

57:05

is completely engulfed in darkness.

57:08

There is still one more scene after this, Humbert

57:10

goes to Quality's house to murder him.

57:12

After he's killed, a certain gentleman

57:15

tells Humbert what Lolita's fate

57:17

was, her death, her baby. Humbert

57:19

asks what he should do next, and

57:22

a certain gentleman, the narrator of

57:24

this production, tells Humbert trigger

57:26

warning that Humbert is going to

57:29

masturbate to Lolita over

57:31

Quiality's dead body, and

57:33

he starts to do that, and

57:36

that's the end of the play.

57:39

Now it's hard to compare

57:41

and contrast these failed Broadway

57:44

shows. Not only are they completely

57:46

different genres of theater, but it's impossible

57:48

to watch them since they never actually

57:50

opened. I do find it interesting that the

57:52

actresses cast to play Lolita,

57:54

at least in the case of Denise Nickerson

57:56

in Lolita My Love and Blanche Baker

57:59

in Edward Albe's Lolita, we're both

58:01

styled to look very similar to

58:03

Sue Lyon in the Kuberc adaptation.

58:05

The Blonde Bombshell approach

58:08

that completely contradicts Nabokov's

58:10

description of Dolores, a lanky

58:12

Burnett who is by all accounts an

58:14

ordinary looking kid. That's a whole issue

58:16

we're going to keep discussing in future episodes,

58:19

and one of the reasons it's indisputably

58:21

always going to be an issue adapting

58:23

Lolita with actors. Part of what makes

58:25

the book so horrifying is that we

58:28

know that Dolores Hayes is a twelve

58:30

year old, and reflecting that on stage,

58:32

no matter how sensitively done, with

58:35

a child who is twelve, is inarguably

58:38

unsafe. Nickerson does a good

58:41

job in the part of Lolita in the rehearsal

58:43

recording that you can hear, but the message

58:45

of the show isn't just muddled. It

58:47

tries to have a child at the age that the

58:49

book indicates also matched the

58:51

uncanny seductress rule that Humbert.

58:54

Humbert casts her in and tries to have

58:56

both be true. Not only does it not work,

58:59

it makes a listener very uncomfortable

59:02

to hear a kid have to play.

59:04

So not only is this a failure on the writer's

59:06

part to acknowledge that Humbert's account

59:08

is unreliable. I think the tonal dissonance

59:11

and how Nickerson is presented by Humbert

59:13

and quilty and Lolita my love as

59:15

this seductress, with how

59:17

we see her on stage as a

59:20

kid singing about how she never wanted

59:22

any of this. It scans very

59:24

odd because it is odd not

59:26

just because a girl of Dolores Jeyes's

59:29

age can't contain multitudes, but because

59:31

having Humbert's false reality projected

59:33

onto a thirteen year old as if it's fact,

59:36

and a lighthearted fact that that is

59:38

so disorienting that you almost have

59:40

to laugh and hope that Nickerson was

59:42

protected behind the scenes. Given Chris Gilmore's

59:45

account of her experiences. Then

59:47

in Alpiece Lolita, the dissonance

59:49

is a little different. We are absolutely

59:51

led to believe that Lolita brings her ordeal

59:53

onto herself, but the friction between

59:56

Humbert, Humbert and his own author is

59:58

the strongest relationship focus upon.

1:00:00

Now. There's no public record of Baker's

1:00:02

performance in Albi's Lolita, but playing

1:00:05

the role at twenty four, even though Baker

1:00:07

did tend to play younger roles at this point in

1:00:09

her career, there's no doubt that an audience

1:00:11

would be able to tell the difference between an

1:00:13

actor of Denise Nickerson's age and one

1:00:15

of Blante Baker's. This is not a slight to

1:00:18

Baker at all, and I think in terms of

1:00:20

production ethics, it's the responsible

1:00:22

choice. Especially with the gritty,

1:00:25

gross choices that Albe makes,

1:00:27

Having an actual minor in that role night

1:00:29

after night would be as unacceptable

1:00:32

as Nabukov thought it would be in the

1:00:34

early nineteen seventies. But there's still a

1:00:36

conflict here seeing an actress in

1:00:38

her twenties, even one who appears

1:00:40

to be in her teens, act in the role

1:00:42

of seductress with Humbert. Humbert strikes

1:00:45

a slightly different tone on stage than

1:00:47

the twelve year old we hear about in the book,

1:00:49

and this repeated tendency to show

1:00:52

sexualized adults as representative

1:00:54

of children creates a dissonance

1:00:57

that strikes with actual children. I mean,

1:00:59

you can go to Riverdale for that.

1:01:01

You can go to any show about

1:01:03

teenagers that's on broadcast television

1:01:06

where all of the quote unquote teenagers

1:01:08

are played by people ten years older than

1:01:10

them. There have been so many listeners

1:01:12

of this show who have reached out to me not

1:01:15

having read the book before, saying that

1:01:17

their cultural osmosis of this

1:01:19

story of Lolita was that Lolita

1:01:22

was about a purvy older man hitting

1:01:24

on and having sex with a teenage

1:01:26

girl presented to the viewer as sexy.

1:01:29

As we all know now five episodes in,

1:01:31

that's not the plot of the book, but the popular

1:01:34

images, even up through the Alba

1:01:36

production in the nineteen eighties, reinforce

1:01:39

that common takeaway. So much

1:01:41

of this story's legacy are driven

1:01:43

by aesthetics, and the book off was

1:01:45

well aware of that. In the afterward

1:01:48

to Lolita, called on a book

1:01:50

entitled Lolita, he writes this, for

1:01:53

me, a work of fiction exists only

1:01:55

in so far is it affords what I shall

1:01:57

bluntly call aesthetic bliss.

1:01:59

That is a sense of being somehow somewhere

1:02:02

connected with other states of being where

1:02:04

art, curiosity, tenderness, kindness,

1:02:06

ecstasy is the norm.

1:02:08

This is a lot of why I think this story

1:02:11

is considered by many to be unadaptable.

1:02:14

It is about crimes so horrific

1:02:16

that acting them out on stage with actors

1:02:18

the same age as the characters is

1:02:20

unthinkable, and yet they persist

1:02:23

finding workaround using

1:02:25

actors of the correct age. For Lolita

1:02:28

and watering the material down, or

1:02:30

conversely, using an older actor

1:02:32

for Lolita and misrepresenting the reality

1:02:35

of the story's abject horror. And

1:02:37

I'll be clear here, the abuse of a person

1:02:40

and their opportunes is no less

1:02:42

horrifying and contemptible. But there's

1:02:44

an additional issue the men adapting

1:02:46

this story right with the assumption

1:02:49

that Lolita is not just able to

1:02:51

consent, but is actively seducing

1:02:53

Humbered, just as he says in the

1:02:55

text. I'll take you back to that quote

1:02:58

from Norman Twain from earlier. We've

1:03:00

got to have a girl who makes a man forget the

1:03:02

moral conventions of society. But

1:03:05

it's got to be a complete mental situation.

1:03:07

If Lelite's five ft five with a great

1:03:10

figure, it would be perfectly normal

1:03:12

for from Bear to go after her. This

1:03:14

was an attitude that existed loudly

1:03:17

and commonly at this time. So

1:03:20

a live action interpretation of this story,

1:03:22

particularly a nightly one, becomes

1:03:24

a basically unworkable idea from a performance

1:03:27

perspective. In my opinion, personally

1:03:29

as an animation writer, I think it's

1:03:31

animation or bust on this one. But that's

1:03:34

another episode. But that isn't to say,

1:03:36

if this live action issue were

1:03:38

miraculously resolved, that these

1:03:41

Broadway attempts would have been successful.

1:03:43

There is no way, because there

1:03:45

is the and I hate to use that

1:03:47

these one oh one terms with you. You're smarter

1:03:50

than this, but I have to use it. There is the

1:03:52

male gaze of it all, with the way

1:03:55

Learner and Barry in nineteen seventy one

1:03:57

and Albe in nineteen eighty one are

1:04:00

undoubtedly coming from a place of prioritizing

1:04:02

Humbert's voice and predicament, though with very

1:04:05

different approaches. Unlike Nabokov's

1:04:07

book, Lolita or Dolores

1:04:09

isn't really hiding in the pages of these

1:04:12

plays. She's not there at all.

1:04:14

Quality's role is inflated in both Unreliability

1:04:17

is attempted to be addressed, but ultimately

1:04:20

either ends up endearing you to Humbert or

1:04:22

making him seem less responsible for

1:04:24

his choices by including a writer on stage.

1:04:27

And as always, Lolita's

1:04:30

role is reduced to that of seductress

1:04:32

who really barely appears. Before

1:04:35

we leave this chapter in Lolita adaptation

1:04:38

history, I wanted to share another small

1:04:40

slice of an interview I did with Blanche

1:04:42

Baker, who played Lolita in the Albe

1:04:44

play and as an Emmy winning actor and

1:04:46

professor. I'll remind you here that Baker

1:04:49

was the daughter of an actress named

1:04:51

Carol Baker, whose part in the movie

1:04:53

Baby Doll in the nineteen fifties was

1:04:55

a huge influence on how Sue

1:04:57

Lion was styled in Kubrick's Low

1:05:00

To in the nineteen sixties. And this

1:05:02

family through line of these very

1:05:04

specific ragid sexual aesthetics

1:05:06

being asked of their performances is

1:05:09

not lost on Blanche Baker, reflecting

1:05:11

an issue had by virtually every

1:05:13

actor who has played Lolita that I've spoken

1:05:15

to. Her issues with taking on the role

1:05:18

had much more to do with her treatment

1:05:20

by the media and the public. Unlike

1:05:22

others, Baker had a generally positive

1:05:25

experience with the casting crew of the Albie

1:05:27

production. Here's a little slice of our discussion

1:05:29

about her experience with the media around

1:05:32

the time of this show in the

1:05:35

show runs. From what I've seen, the show

1:05:37

ran for a couple of weeks, um

1:05:40

after Boston previews. What was

1:05:42

that switch from Boston to New

1:05:44

York Like that was the

1:05:47

onslaught of publicity, So that

1:05:49

was that was very difficult, um,

1:05:52

you know, and I had to be very careful. I was a

1:05:54

young girls didn't have a lot of money and stuff,

1:05:56

and I was being followed after

1:06:00

show and stuff, and I had to have people meet

1:06:02

me. I remember, it was really not so pleasant

1:06:04

that aspect once I was before I got

1:06:06

on the stage, and after I got off the stage. It really

1:06:08

wasn't a heck of a lot of fun. Any

1:06:11

time I went to a party, people were really looking

1:06:13

at me, so I stopped going to parties.

1:06:15

I really became more of a reck louse than

1:06:17

you would imagine because I felt

1:06:19

like I couldn't live up to what people

1:06:22

expected. That was my own insanity,

1:06:24

I guess, um, but I

1:06:26

felt like they would expect me to be prettier,

1:06:29

expect me to be you know, sexy,

1:06:31

or forget that I was an actress, and I was just

1:06:33

very uncomfortable for a

1:06:35

while in my own skin. Thank

1:06:38

you so much to Blanche Baker, and like Chris

1:06:40

Gilmore, we will be speaking more with her

1:06:42

soon. Okay, I know this is getting to

1:06:44

be a long episode again, but really

1:06:47

quick. Lolita

1:07:03

has made other attempts on stage over

1:07:05

the years, with varying, usually

1:07:08

low degrees of success, that I would

1:07:10

like to touch on really quickly, but not as

1:07:12

in depth because they are in no way as

1:07:14

notorious as the two shows we've talked about

1:07:17

so far. But for the sake of completeness, it

1:07:19

is a weird list, all right, Let's

1:07:21

roll through these. There is the

1:07:24

Russian opera of Lolita from by

1:07:27

composer ro Dion Shedrin, which

1:07:29

debuted at the Swedish Royal Opera with

1:07:31

a Swedish translation of the Russian libretto.

1:07:34

Lolita was played by a twenty five year

1:07:36

old soprano. This is arguably one of the

1:07:38

more successful and enduring adaptations,

1:07:40

as it still plays today every once in

1:07:42

a while. But that's not to say that it gets the point

1:07:45

of the story. It's been performed in Russian,

1:07:47

Swedish and German. Now, speaking

1:07:49

to this problematic approach, let's

1:07:52

hear from Shedrin on his interpretation

1:07:54

of the story. It feels like a nostalgia

1:07:56

for beauty. It is a symbol really for

1:07:59

me. First, really, Lolita as a character

1:08:01

is less of a human being but rather an archetype

1:08:04

symbol of beauty, but a fleeting beauty.

1:08:08

Okay, yikes. And that's also not to

1:08:10

say that the reviews of this show were good here's

1:08:12

what Michael Walsh of Time said. Unfortunately,

1:08:16

the novel has more music on a single page.

1:08:18

Shedren's lazy, imptant scores

1:08:21

loudish when it's not downright sullen,

1:08:24

So there's that. Also, it's four hours

1:08:26

long. Moving on, there are several

1:08:28

ballet productions that I've found records

1:08:30

of, one which was choreographed by British

1:08:32

dancer Kathy Marston in in

1:08:35

Denmark that, based on its trailer,

1:08:37

really seems to play up Lolita's role of seductress

1:08:40

as a torturer of Humbert. She

1:08:42

even like grins maniacally at the camera

1:08:45

at the end. Brought another

1:08:47

attempted opera in Boston from composer

1:08:50

John Harbison, which ends up getting canceled

1:08:52

when the clergy child abuse scandal in

1:08:54

Boston happened in two thousand and two. In

1:08:57

two thousand and three, a lot of attempts.

1:08:59

Writer Michael West staged some of

1:09:01

Nabokov's unused screenplay from

1:09:03

the nineteen sixty two movie in Dublin,

1:09:06

Ireland, and people didn't like it.

1:09:08

Reviewer Hiroko Mikami said, in

1:09:10

particular the way that sex was

1:09:13

staged between Humbert and Lolita

1:09:15

which already I'm like, no, thank you,

1:09:17

but Maccami says, the way it was staged, he

1:09:20

felt clearly placed the blame

1:09:22

of a rape onto the victim.

1:09:24

Also in two thousand three, Russian director

1:09:26

Victor Sobchuk wrote a stage adaptation

1:09:29

that gets rid of quality entirely

1:09:31

and changes the setting to England in the early

1:09:33

two thousand's. Also in two thousand

1:09:36

three, Italian choreographer David

1:09:38

Bombana did a seventy minute ballet

1:09:40

adaptation that skewed extremely

1:09:43

erotic based on clips I've seen with Lolita

1:09:45

and Humbert looking very sensual.

1:09:47

There's a number of duet dance numbers that have been

1:09:50

inspired by Lolita and Humbert over

1:09:52

the years, all of which have a very

1:09:54

forbidden love tone. All links

1:09:56

on below. It's a little more

1:09:58

intriguing. There was a man show from two

1:10:01

thousand nine written by Richard Nelson

1:10:03

that features Humbert Humbert speaking to

1:10:05

the audience from a prison cell. Years

1:10:07

later. This production was pretty well reviewed, and

1:10:10

while Dolores obviously never appears

1:10:12

on stage, it couldn't be clearer, according

1:10:14

to the reviews of the time, that Humbert

1:10:16

is projecting and unreliable

1:10:18

and Brian Cox played him here who

1:10:21

is the daddy in succession?

1:10:23

And we know he can play a really

1:10:26

mean guy. Also in two thousand

1:10:28

nine, American composer Joshua Feinberg

1:10:30

and choreographer Johann Saunier

1:10:33

made a quote unquote imagined

1:10:35

opera in New Jersey that was a multimedia

1:10:38

production. Humbert Humbert uses screens

1:10:40

and dance and video to demonstrate

1:10:43

his descent and obsession. This was

1:10:45

pretty well reviewed in the New York Times, but

1:10:47

given how reviewers Steve Smith characterizes

1:10:50

the source material, I don't really know who to trust

1:10:52

here. Here's how Steve Smith talks about the

1:10:54

story. Is Humbert Humbert a suave,

1:10:56

calculating seducer or a

1:10:58

pretentious, delusional monster? Mighty

1:11:01

also be a relatable victim, not only

1:11:04

of his own urges but also of those

1:11:06

of Dolores Hayes, the child

1:11:08

with whom he has obsessed. But

1:11:10

clips from this production seemed to strike

1:11:13

closer to the right tone. I do wish I could

1:11:15

have seen it. And finally, there

1:11:17

is a Minnesota comedy group called

1:11:19

four Humors that did a three person

1:11:22

production based on the Kubrick movie. In

1:11:25

oh the parts are played by white guys. It's

1:11:27

clearly in over the top comedy and like

1:11:30

Lolita is played by a chubby guy

1:11:32

in his thirties wearing a bikini,

1:11:45

like I'm just, I'm just,

1:11:48

I'm tough. I don't know about

1:11:50

you, but I was exhausted just having to listen

1:11:52

to that, and like, no offense if if these

1:11:54

guys are listening, I guess, But sometimes

1:11:56

you just get the feeling that a guy watches

1:11:58

three episodes of Anti Python and

1:12:01

it's like, I think I'm a comedian and

1:12:03

it's like, no, I think you just hold

1:12:05

prejudices from the early nineteen

1:12:07

seventies. Whatever, I'm a comedian

1:12:09

and this as lame as fuck. And that's the comprehensive

1:12:12

list up until now. But

1:12:14

all this to say, there's been a lot of

1:12:16

attempts, and on stage, none

1:12:19

of them have been enduring. And you'll

1:12:21

notice that there were only one or two

1:12:23

women involved in any of the above

1:12:26

in a creative, high level sense, which

1:12:28

brings us to the present.

1:12:31

The final adaptation I want to

1:12:33

discuss is one I found to be

1:12:35

the most intriguing. It was a

1:12:37

revival of the Alan Jay Lerner

1:12:39

musical Lolita My Love that was performed

1:12:42

in New York in as

1:12:44

a part of a celebration of his work, and

1:12:46

the director of this production of

1:12:49

Lolita My Love was drum

1:12:51

roll please, a woman

1:12:56

was not a sist. Man. Can you believe

1:12:58

It's? Wow? It's really edible stuff.

1:13:00

It takes sixty five years,

1:13:03

but but you get there. The director

1:13:05

of the revival of

1:13:08

Lolita My Love is named Emily

1:13:10

Maltby. She took on the challenge

1:13:12

of creating a workshop performance of

1:13:14

the show by cobbling and restructuring

1:13:17

all of the drafts that Learner wrote

1:13:19

throughout the seventies. Working with composer

1:13:22

Eric Hogginson, Malbi managed to

1:13:24

create a pretty contemporary version

1:13:26

of the show that still used Learner's

1:13:29

work exclusively, adding in a character

1:13:31

that was a therapist speaking to Humbert

1:13:33

to address the unreliability that

1:13:35

goes undiscussed in the original. Again,

1:13:38

I have not seen this show, but I know many

1:13:40

who have, and given the fact that Maltby

1:13:43

was only given a handful of weeks to get

1:13:45

the production together, it sounds like a pretty

1:13:47

unique moment in lowlit to adaptation

1:13:49

history. We'll be talking to her more in the

1:13:52

finale of the pod. But I wanted to

1:13:54

end this episode, speaking with her about

1:13:56

her process of waiting through Learner's

1:13:58

drafts and finding stuff she could use,

1:14:01

as well as her approach to taking on not

1:14:03

just in the book of Lolita, but learners.

1:14:05

Here's our discussion. I

1:14:08

just couldn't believe that this fourteen year old girl was

1:14:10

so was so into this, and so one

1:14:13

of the things we did was basically I went through the script

1:14:15

and I highlighted the moments that if

1:14:17

I were Humbert, I would

1:14:19

would be my like prime examples of

1:14:22

how interested of how

1:14:24

she behaved like a Lolita,

1:14:26

right, how she manipulated him, how she coaxed

1:14:29

it, whatever, how much she wanted it, how much she was into

1:14:31

it, whatever. I found all of those moments sort

1:14:33

of highlighted them and they were really like, you know, a

1:14:35

passage here, an interaction here, whatever.

1:14:38

Um. And so we would play a little like echo

1:14:40

of this synth music. The

1:14:42

lights would change to like

1:14:45

this sort of insidious green and this like stark

1:14:47

white uplight um. And

1:14:49

the actors playing Lolita, who

1:14:52

I should say was twenty four, which she is very small.

1:14:54

UM. I was very adamant from the beginning that we're

1:14:56

not casting an underage actress. Um.

1:14:59

But she she went from this you

1:15:01

know, rambunctious, fourteen year old kind of

1:15:04

energy, and she would essentially like go into

1:15:06

like a trance. She would go into like you

1:15:08

know, she would sort of lose all

1:15:10

of her agency

1:15:13

and he would um. And

1:15:15

then she would just deliver these lines as if

1:15:18

as if he was like puppeting them to her or

1:15:20

parenting them to her, right, and he

1:15:22

would like, you know, not quite as literally

1:15:24

as like controlling her like a marionette. But

1:15:26

that was the sort of idea

1:15:29

was that, you know, there were these moments

1:15:31

and we kind of I couldn't give her extra lines,

1:15:33

I couldn't give her a voice, but I could show you that

1:15:35

her voice was being taken from her. Maybe

1:15:37

what you're seeing didn't actually happen in

1:15:40

that way, you know, and and maybe he's

1:15:42

coloring it. And so there were just these

1:15:44

couple of moments that for him were these

1:15:46

key moments where we just got

1:15:48

a sense of like he was kind of

1:15:50

manipulating the storytelling. And we

1:15:53

had this thing in the very first song

1:15:55

where she came out, you know, with

1:15:57

a sweatshirt and her hair up, and then over

1:15:59

the core of the song, the ensemble

1:16:03

like at his commands, you know, took

1:16:05

her hair down and took the sweatshirt off, and then he

1:16:07

kind of um trained her to tuck her

1:16:09

hair behind her ears, and it was just sort

1:16:11

of this like creation of Lolita,

1:16:14

this idea of like Lolita being a different

1:16:16

character from Dolores. Thank

1:16:19

you so much to Emily Maltby and we will be

1:16:21

hearing from her soon. And if you thought

1:16:24

we talked about the aesthetics

1:16:26

of Lolita today, honey, buckle

1:16:28

up. We are taking a week off next

1:16:31

week because my brain

1:16:33

is melting out of my ears and it's the holidays.

1:16:35

But in our next episode, we are diving

1:16:38

into the visual legacy of

1:16:40

Lolita. I'm talking music,

1:16:42

I'm talking niche fashion communities.

1:16:45

Not that one Lolita fashion friends,

1:16:47

but there are fashion communities as

1:16:49

well as interviews with some of the creators

1:16:51

and people influenced by them. That's

1:16:53

coming up on our next episode of

1:16:56

Lolita Podcast. Happy Holidays.

1:16:58

Sorry my podcast is so sad. This

1:17:04

has been a production of I Heart Radio.

1:17:06

My name is Jamie Loftus. I write and

1:17:08

host the show. My producers are the wonderful

1:17:10

Sophie Lichtman, Miles gray Beth and

1:17:13

Marco Luso and Jack O'Brien. My

1:17:15

editor is the amazing Isaac Taylor.

1:17:17

Additional research and transcription from Ben

1:17:20

Loftus. Music is by Zoe Blade.

1:17:22

Theme is by Brad Dickart. I

1:17:25

wanted to also thank my guest voices on this episode

1:17:28

as he's Laura as Humbert Humbert, Robert

1:17:30

Evans as Vladimir Nabokop, Joel

1:17:33

Smith, Anna jos Nier, Paula

1:17:35

Vignalen, and Aristotle Assavedo.

1:17:38

We'll see you next week.