Speaker 1: Trigger warning. This podcast involves discussions of child sexual abuse
Speaker 1: and pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. Alan Jay Lerner didn't
Speaker 1: need to take suggestions from his assistant. He was Alan
Speaker 1: Jay Learner. He was a Broadway legend. He had written
Speaker 1: lyrics and librettos for huge musicals like My Fair Lady
Speaker 1: for Camelot, for Brigade Doone. I don't know what Brigade
Speaker 1: Dooon is, he wrote it. He'd worked in movies doing
Speaker 1: the music with collaborator Frederick Lowe for Gigi, and he
Speaker 1: wrote An American in Paris. But those hits were a
Speaker 1: while back now, and it was the nineteen seventies. Learner's
Speaker 1: work didn't fit as well into the Broadway culture at
Speaker 1: the seventies. It kicked off hits that had overwhelmed New
Speaker 1: York in a culture shifting way in the mid to
Speaker 1: late sixties into the early seventies were sexy, edgy stuff
Speaker 1: like Hair and Cabaret and Company. And by nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: God's Bell and Jesus Christ super Star. You know, the
Speaker 1: sexy Jesus musicals. Broadway was getting horny, and Alan Jay
Speaker 1: Lerner was not a horny lyricist. His work was pretty traditional,
Speaker 1: featuring heavy costumes and straightforward love stories with catchy burst
Speaker 1: into song hits, and now that luster was wearing off.
Speaker 1: His last two shows were nominated for a handful of Tony's,
Speaker 1: but they were not the smash, financial and culture defining
Speaker 1: hits he'd had with Low up through Camelot in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty the chased Alan jay Lerner needed to get with
Speaker 1: the times. He needed to listen to his assistant. I
Speaker 1: think you see where this is going. His assistant wanted
Speaker 1: him to adapt Lolita by Vladimir Tobakov, and I quickly
Speaker 1: want to give a huge shout out to one of
Speaker 1: the top keepers of Lolita history, writer Sarah Weinman, who
Speaker 1: we talked to last week for collecting a lot of
Speaker 1: this information on the musical back in article for Vulture,
Speaker 1: which I will link in the show notes. So did
Speaker 1: Alan j Lerner understand Lolita? Uh? I think that the
Speaker 1: story of Lolita is much more pertinent now than when
Speaker 1: the film was made. Humbard is such a tragic, flawed
Speaker 1: and misplaced romantic lost in post World War two. They're
Speaker 1: countless men like him over forty who find it impossible
Speaker 1: to wake up in the morning and not blink once
Speaker 1: or twice at the life facing them. Oh, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: Do you ever just hear how any person who has
Speaker 1: ever adapted this book talks about the story and your
Speaker 1: head just like explodes like that scene in Scanners. I can't.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. But okay, who's collaborating on this with Mr Lerner?
Speaker 1: It's a composer named John Barry, a suave Englishman most
Speaker 1: famous for writing the theme song to James Bond. He
Speaker 1: was in his late thirties. To Learners fifty one or
Speaker 1: Is Learner would describe it a contemporary man go off.
Speaker 1: Also on Learner's team is producer Norman Twain, who was
Speaker 1: notorious in theater and film for being a gigantic personality
Speaker 1: with big hits and bigger misses. For an idea of
Speaker 1: what his vibe is, here's a quote pulled from the
Speaker 1: Associated Press piece on the auditions for Lolita in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: We've got to have a girl who makes a man
Speaker 1: forget the moral conventions of society, but it's got to
Speaker 1: be a complete mental situation. If Lolita is five ft
Speaker 1: five with a great figure, it would be perfectly normal
Speaker 1: for from Bear to go after her. The musical was
Speaker 1: to be called Lolita My Love, and it's the last
Speaker 1: attempt at an adaptation Vladimir Tobakov would ever sign off
Speaker 1: on before his passing in ninety seven. By this time,
Speaker 1: he was living in Montro Palace in Switzerland, working on
Speaker 1: new novels full time and enjoying the residuals that Lolita
Speaker 1: continued to rake in. He is, as he was during
Speaker 1: the Kubrick movie, strongly averse to the idea of an
Speaker 1: actual twelve year old playing the part night after night,
Speaker 1: calling it sinful and immoral. This is, according to ken
Speaker 1: Endel bomb book not since Carrie this statement aside, Nabokov
Speaker 1: appears to have had all the faith in the world,
Speaker 1: and Mr my fair Lady at first saying the following,
Speaker 1: Mr Lerner is a most talented and excellent classicist. If
Speaker 1: you have to make a musical version of Lolita, he
Speaker 1: is the one to do it well. Keep in mind
Speaker 1: Nabakov also said that about Kubrick two back in the sixties.
Speaker 1: So let's see where this goes. Back to those low
Speaker 1: La auditions in November nineteen seventy, dozens of girls as
Speaker 1: young as ten and oldest twenty one went to the
Speaker 1: Billy Rose Theater to audition for the head Hanchos and
Speaker 1: Sarah Whyneman's piece kind of distills the vibe at these auditions.
Speaker 1: A thirteen year old audition ee said the following to
Speaker 1: a reporter. I wouldn't like to be Lolita, but I'd
Speaker 1: still like to play the part. And a lot of
Speaker 1: those auditioning legally had to be accompanied by a parent,
Speaker 1: and the parents also had takes. There's a wickedness wherever
Speaker 1: you go. It's just lucky my daughter only play accit.
Speaker 1: The audition process sounded similar to that of Stanley Koprick
Speaker 1: and James B. Harris's a lot of young girls, bodies
Speaker 1: being appraised, a lot of extremely personal questions. Don't wear
Speaker 1: makeup next time, said one of the producers to a
Speaker 1: girl who was auditioning. I wanted to look sexy. The
Speaker 1: girl replied, you look sexy anyways, he said, yikes. The
Speaker 1: actor eventually selected for the role of Lolita was named
Speaker 1: Annette Farah, now a casting director who goes by Chris Gilmore.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking to her today and at the time,
Speaker 1: she was fifteen years old and from a Los Angeles family.
Speaker 1: More interested in her music career than being Lolita, but
Speaker 1: being offered the lead in an Alan J. Lerner musical
Speaker 1: that was grounds to be launched into superstardom, Honey, and
Speaker 1: so she jumped at the opportunity and was willing to
Speaker 1: relocate to New York from Los Angeles with her sister.
Speaker 1: She had had a guest spot on The Brady Bunch
Speaker 1: earlier in nineteen seventy and had sung a number of
Speaker 1: obscure but very catchy teen hits in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and had a promise in rear Ahead, including this incredible
Speaker 1: B side I found on YouTube. She's saying nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: You're a dumb dumb iconic stuff. Everyone go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and listen to You're a Dumb dumb. So at fifteen,
Speaker 1: Farah told the Associated Press her take on the story
Speaker 1: of Lolita. Oh no, there's nothing dirty about what Humber does.
Speaker 1: It's not a crime. In the ant umbar is cured.
Speaker 1: It's just a love story. Interestingly, she had not read
Speaker 1: the book at the time of being cast, so this
Speaker 1: impression she's sharing is an impression made from the loretto
Speaker 1: of the musical. Other leading roles included Dorothy Lowden, as
Speaker 1: Charlotte Hayes. She'd later originate the role of Mrs Hannigan
Speaker 1: and Annie and as Humbert the Shakespearean actor John Neville.
Speaker 1: He'd also been in the mix for the Cooper adaptation,
Speaker 1: and at least physically and in terms of stuffy englishness,
Speaker 1: seemed like a good fit for the part. Rehearsals began
Speaker 1: with February one previews at the Schubert Theater in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: In mind and producer Norman Twain was hyping it up,
Speaker 1: even as things behind the scenes remained very chaotic. As choreography, music,
Speaker 1: and story remained in fairly constant flux, Twaine assured local paper,
Speaker 1: The Camden Courier Post that Lolita My Love would be
Speaker 1: the best thing Alan's ever done, including My Fair Lady,
Speaker 1: and that Alan J. Lerner and John Baba Baba Ba
Speaker 1: Barry was that funny, okay, that they would be even
Speaker 1: better than Learner and Low had been, no better than
Speaker 1: Rogers and Hammerstein, no better than Olivia Benson and Elliott Stabler.
Speaker 1: I've never watched s VU, but but I thought that
Speaker 1: that might hit for people. When asked what Lolita My
Speaker 1: Love was like as a show, Twain said the following.
Speaker 1: No contraver see, no nudity, no four letter words, nothing
Speaker 1: which compromises the taste of membo. The moral is that
Speaker 1: total obsession with anything destroys a person, whether the obsessions
Speaker 1: a little girl or a philosophy here. Okay, oh wait,
Speaker 1: you've not done. Could I be involved with a nim fete? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It could be, absolutely. There are certain types of girls,
Speaker 1: little girls FETs, but all else being equal, would turn
Speaker 1: me on if you met them in a motel by chance.
Speaker 1: But I haven't fallen yet. I've been playing it pretty straight.
Speaker 1: My wife prefers it that way. So before the short
Speaker 1: history of Lolita my Love was complete, the lead a
Speaker 1: net Farah would be replaced for reasons we'll discussed today.
Speaker 1: The show was completely reworked multiple times, and it had
Speaker 1: lost nearly a million dollars in ninety one money in
Speaker 1: production costs. A playbill from the show's final run in
Speaker 1: Boston at the Schubert Theater proclaimed a two act sweeping
Speaker 1: produce auction that started in Ramsdale with songs like in
Speaker 1: the Broken Promised Land of fifteen and Dante, Petrarch and
Speaker 1: Poe all the way through Humbert Sweeping Lolita away to
Speaker 1: the Betty By Motel and to Beardsley with Quilties, showstopper
Speaker 1: March Out of My Life. I'm not kidding. Nabokov never
Speaker 1: saw the show. He was enthusiastic at first, but much
Speaker 1: like his experience with the Cooper adaptation, his enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: the adaptation wilted over time. By October ninety one, he
Speaker 1: told The New York Times the following if they're going
Speaker 1: to do it, someday, they're going to do it, so
Speaker 1: I had better be around when they do it, not
Speaker 1: only to criticize the thing, but also to explain that
Speaker 1: I have nothing to do with it. So why haven't
Speaker 1: we heard about Lolita, My love, the show that brought
Speaker 1: you my least favorite line in all of music? Who
Speaker 1: is the piper who likes them? Post? Because it never
Speaker 1: debuted on Broadway? This is lowly to podcast. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Lolita Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Loftus, and
Speaker 1: today I think we're going to get about as close
Speaker 1: to some levity as this series is going to get,
Speaker 1: because we are talking about Lolita on stage now. Saying
Speaker 1: this episode is going to be a little lighter doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there isn't still a fair amount of trauma
Speaker 1: being discussed this is Lolita Podcast, and there certainly is.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking about the Broadway musical of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one by Alan Jay Lerner one adaptation by Edward Albe,
Speaker 1: as well as the mattering of international ballets, stage shows,
Speaker 1: and operas in a recent attempted revival of Lolita My
Speaker 1: Love in New York, which spoiler alert is the first
Speaker 1: adaptation of Lolita ever to be directed by a woman.
Speaker 1: I'll say it, Lolita does not work on stage, or hasn't,
Speaker 1: I should say, but the reasons why fall into the
Speaker 1: same trappings that most adaptations of Lolita don't, but in
Speaker 1: a uniquely theatrical way. I think the reason that the
Speaker 1: two Broadway failures that we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: most specifically rank as less harmful in terms of adaptation
Speaker 1: is because one wouldn't debut on Broadway at all, and
Speaker 1: the other would barely make it out of the starting gate.
Speaker 1: They were completely panned, and they never really got the
Speaker 1: chance to do much cultural harm to anybody, except, of course,
Speaker 1: the girls and women playing the titular role. Another pattern
Speaker 1: that is well established that will be devoting an entire
Speaker 1: episode two in a couple of weeks. Today, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be speaking to Chris Gilmore, formerly a net Farah, who
Speaker 1: played Lolita in the nineteen seventy one musical, Blanche Baker,
Speaker 1: who played Lolita in the one adaptation by Edward Albi,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Holder, the executive director of the Edward F.
Speaker 1: Alby Foundation. In this episode, I think you'll notice a
Speaker 1: few trends solidifying in the adaptations of Lolita, carrying over
Speaker 1: from the Stanley Kubrick movie that have a lot in
Speaker 1: common and are also very uniquely of their time. So
Speaker 1: with that in mind, let's return to nineteen seventy. My
Speaker 1: parents are in elementary school and a few hours south
Speaker 1: of where they lived. Lolita my Love was in production
Speaker 1: preparing for a February debut in Philly. The cast dealt
Speaker 1: with constant content changes, and the show debuted to uh
Speaker 1: these reviews in its present form, which will doubtlessly be
Speaker 1: drastically altered before it leaves down. The show is only
Speaker 1: a ghost of Nabokov's comic masterpiece. The kindest thing that
Speaker 1: can be said out the musical is that it's a disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by all accounts it didn't work. This February shipwreck made
Speaker 1: the original March thirty intended Broadway debut more or less impossible.
Speaker 1: Learner and Barry had a ton of overhaul to do
Speaker 1: and would need a successful preview to go off without
Speaker 1: a hit. Before hitting a New York stage, producer Norman
Speaker 1: Twain went into damage control mode, saying that quote, the
Speaker 1: show didn't work technically, and when things don't work technically,
Speaker 1: nothing goes right. I can see the backstage crew rolling
Speaker 1: their eyes from here. That was not the problem. It
Speaker 1: was the material, and after the failure of the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: shows critically, with this constant material change, we see some
Speaker 1: of the key players get shuffled out. Director Tito Capo
Speaker 1: Bianco is replaced by British director Noel Willman, and Annette
Speaker 1: Farah leaves the production as Lolita Now. The reason given
Speaker 1: by the production at the time for firing Farah, who
Speaker 1: had been styled to look very similar to Sue Lyon
Speaker 1: and kuprisill Alita, was detailed in a gossip column of
Speaker 1: the time which was unearthed by Sarah Weinman. It says
Speaker 1: that Pharaoh was quote looking twenty four when she was
Speaker 1: supposed to be sixteen unquote. The reality, according to Chris Gilmore,
Speaker 1: was very different. More in that shortly after Fara departs,
Speaker 1: auditions for Lolita are held again, including a young Sissy
Speaker 1: spacect but Denise Nickerson is the choice for the role
Speaker 1: in spite of Nabokov's initial anxieties of casting a girl
Speaker 1: of Dolores Hayes's real age in the book, Nickerson was
Speaker 1: only thirteen. During that next round of previews, she was
Speaker 1: seventy five pounds and four ft nine, and her hair
Speaker 1: was styled into the blonde bob evocative of lions. And
Speaker 1: if Denise Nickerson's name sounds familiar, it's because she plays
Speaker 1: Violet Beauregard in The Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka and the
Speaker 1: Chocolate Factory and had just finished shooting shortly before taking
Speaker 1: the role. Nickerson sadly passed away last year, but with
Speaker 1: the changes in cast and libretto made the show launched
Speaker 1: again that March in Boston at the Schubert Theater and
Speaker 1: in only lasted nine performances. Luckily for us, or put
Speaker 1: a pin in that maybe not, but for my purpose
Speaker 1: is lucky. A recording from the audio board from Boston
Speaker 1: is preserved in full, giving us recordings of the songs
Speaker 1: and an idea of what the show sounded like, although
Speaker 1: the extensive dance numbers, yes you hurt that right, remain
Speaker 1: lost to history. And no matter how many giggles of
Speaker 1: enjoyment you hear from the nineties seventies Bostonians in the
Speaker 1: clips you're gonna hear today, the reviews in Boston were
Speaker 1: just as rough. I'm afraid it's going to be a
Speaker 1: case of better never than late. Do you be taking
Speaker 1: us first? Are melodrama or satire or just a dirty
Speaker 1: musical comedy? Some good music and some fine wit, but
Speaker 1: it is done in by the plot. We mean style
Speaker 1: and daste and depth. And these are things which al
Speaker 1: and Jay Lemo's idea of theater evidently can no longer offer. Oh,
Speaker 1: that last review was from the Harvard Crimson. So just
Speaker 1: imagine like an eighteen year old with a suit that's
Speaker 1: too big saying that. So Lolita, my love flops in Philly,
Speaker 1: it flops in Boston. And Lerner was desperate to save
Speaker 1: the production. He rewrote the show again twice, renamed it
Speaker 1: Light of My Life, which seems like kind of a
Speaker 1: lateral move in terms of creepy sounding titles, and he
Speaker 1: tried to recast the leads again, pursuing Rex Harrison for Humbert.
Speaker 1: Rex Harrison was in My Fair Lady and Haley Mills
Speaker 1: for Lolita, and Haley Mills at this point was too
Speaker 1: old for the role by quite a bit, at age
Speaker 1: twenty four, and she had already turned down the role
Speaker 1: of Lolita in Stanley Koper's production nearly ten years earlier.
Speaker 1: Nabokov had this to say about Fara and Nickerson, the
Speaker 1: two Lolita's cast in a musical. He had never seen
Speaker 1: both girls, the one they fired and the one who
Speaker 1: replaced her, were awful little boozym me girls, the wrong
Speaker 1: type altogether. Uh what. By the end, Lolita My Love
Speaker 1: had hemorrhaged a million dollars and it never debuted on Broadway.
Speaker 1: Everyone was ready to move on, and they did. But
Speaker 1: don't cry for this musical, because I think you will
Speaker 1: understand why it flopped when we give the one surviving
Speaker 1: bootleg recording a little listen. This adaptation is so extremely
Speaker 1: off the mark that it was genuinely hard for me
Speaker 1: to keep up with the whiplash of the tone. Like
Speaker 1: if you thought the Kubrick adaptation was being played too
Speaker 1: much for comedy. You have not heard anything. This musical
Speaker 1: isn't just a comedy of manners. Humbered Humbert is presented
Speaker 1: as a full on comedic hero and Lolita and My
Speaker 1: Love never made it far enough into production to ever
Speaker 1: release a cast album. So what's being pulled from here
Speaker 1: is a rehearsal that's taking place in front of an
Speaker 1: audience in Boston, my home city. And please do not
Speaker 1: judge them too harshly for how much they seem to
Speaker 1: love this. There's a lot of adaptation changes that were
Speaker 1: popularized in Kubrick's Lolita that follow through to this adaptation.
Speaker 1: Everyone calls the lead Lolita instead of Dolly or Dolores.
Speaker 1: Quilty has a hugely inflated presence, and Humbert is a
Speaker 1: long standing teacher, But the bizarreness of this adaptation is
Speaker 1: uniquely its own. It opens with Humbert Humbert talking to
Speaker 1: the audience at the beginning of the show, explaining what
Speaker 1: nymphets are to us. The stage format does make it
Speaker 1: much easier for Humbert to break the fourth wall and
Speaker 1: speak to the audience directly, and this show does take
Speaker 1: smart advantage of that at times. How many of you
Speaker 1: have ever committed a murder? I under it surprisingly unsurprising experience.
Speaker 1: For eighteen years of my quality, I have been a teacher.
Speaker 1: Every morning while shaving, I invariedly looked in the mirror
Speaker 1: and said, Humbert, you look exactly like a teacher. The
Speaker 1: day after the murder, I looked in the mirror and
Speaker 1: I said, humble you, she'll look exactly. Humbert says he
Speaker 1: was teaching at a girls school in Switzerland, had to
Speaker 1: break down, then goes to Ramsdale, Vermont, to give lectures
Speaker 1: at the local college. Now where in New England Ramsdale
Speaker 1: is kind of varies depending on the adaptation. It's like
Speaker 1: New Hampshire for Kubrick Vermont. In this adaptation, who knows why,
Speaker 1: but Humbert does mention to us that he got divorced.
Speaker 1: Humbert goes to Ramsdale and meets Charlotte, who brings up
Speaker 1: her deceased husband Harold and shows Humbert her dead husband's
Speaker 1: gun and his ashes. You're married, divorce, madam, happily divorced
Speaker 1: many years ago in Paris, Oh Harrod magic. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of laughing on this recording, and Dorothy Loudden is
Speaker 1: definitely going for comedy with Charlotte here, but also it
Speaker 1: seems like everybody's going for comedy. Denise Nickerson is introduced
Speaker 1: to us as Lolita, and at age thirteen, she really
Speaker 1: does sound thirteen, possibly more so than anyone who was
Speaker 1: or played the part. You are Lolita, Lola, Lolita, there
Speaker 1: are me, and just keep in mind for a reference
Speaker 1: of how old she looked at this time. She plays
Speaker 1: Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka this same exact year. Humbard's
Speaker 1: journals are significantly watered down to keep things light, and
Speaker 1: he sings about Annabel to Lolita in the song in
Speaker 1: the Broken Promised Land of fifteen. Perhaps it looks more
Speaker 1: like a little girl that I knew many many years ago,
Speaker 1: where Prince by the Sea Lolita never learned of Annabel,
Speaker 1: and other adaptations that I know of. So it's an
Speaker 1: interesting deviation, is that man upon the side. Another repeated
Speaker 1: trend here is that Charlotte so heartlessly treated by the
Speaker 1: script that the audience is trained to respond to some
Speaker 1: really brutal lines from Humbert with laughter rumbling upstairs like
Speaker 1: a truck on the street. Bursting into my room like
Speaker 1: a horrs and heat that like driving out of my sight,
Speaker 1: my only to the light of my life. Humbert is
Speaker 1: preparing a lecture for Charlotte's group on the poets. I
Speaker 1: intend to dwell exclusively on Fante fell in up with
Speaker 1: Beatrice when she was nine, pet trot Will fell in
Speaker 1: up with Laura when she was twelve, and Edgar Allan
Speaker 1: Poe married Virginia when she was Humbert also makes very
Speaker 1: little effort to conceal his true nature in this show,
Speaker 1: but the people surrounding him are written to be so
Speaker 1: clueless that it doesn't seem to matter. For my money,
Speaker 1: he couldn't be more obvious. I won't speak to one
Speaker 1: of them, only to Lolita, and Lolita, while remaining and
Speaker 1: behaving twelve years old, is still framed to be a seductress,
Speaker 1: and her quote unquote fluziness is often a pause for
Speaker 1: laugh moment as actually, when Quialty is on stage, I'd
Speaker 1: love to see little Lovelica. She must have grown. She's
Speaker 1: sleeping out tonight, she must have Pulling from kuberc here,
Speaker 1: Quilty comes to Ramsdale and meets Humbert. He's famous. His
Speaker 1: plays are on TV, and he's also already familiar with
Speaker 1: the concept of a nymphant infant a nymphet by me
Speaker 1: caps Walker say how is your daughter? Gross? This is
Speaker 1: a song called Dante, Petrarch and Poe. This song is
Speaker 1: maybe the best and the worst of what all of
Speaker 1: the adaptations have to offer, all said and done, you
Speaker 1: see it is a Lectures exclusive plick features poets enraptured
Speaker 1: and captured by creatures. Any pue, peasant, pessant, you peasant
Speaker 1: chan them and throw them? What else is there to
Speaker 1: call them but a nymphant? Because it's gross and awful
Speaker 1: and trying to make you laugh about one of the
Speaker 1: worst crimes that plagues humanity. But it's all so written
Speaker 1: by the same guy who did My Fair Lady, and
Speaker 1: the music is good. My head is exploding. Who is
Speaker 1: that viper who likes them post viper? Who is that
Speaker 1: viper that likes them post diaper? Why would you write
Speaker 1: that this is how that song ends? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Back at the house, Charlotte tries to seduce Humbert with
Speaker 1: a show stopping number that I'm pretty sure it includes
Speaker 1: an extensive dance routine. But Lolita comes home from a party,
Speaker 1: and she and Humbert immediately start flirting. You remind me
Speaker 1: of a sleepy Flamingo. Charlie gets a more sympathetic moment
Speaker 1: than she does in other adaptations at this point. She
Speaker 1: expresses regret at coming to rm Stell and expresses her loneliness.
Speaker 1: Lolita then delivers Charlotte's letter, and while Lolita is away,
Speaker 1: Humbert and Charlotte get married mother Englishman stepfather. Humbert, in
Speaker 1: keeping with being the cruelest Humbert in this entire adaptation
Speaker 1: catalog actually maybe put a pin in that until later
Speaker 1: in the episode. But Humbert then sings a literal song
Speaker 1: about how much he hates being married to Charlotte for
Speaker 1: only twenty days. She talked and talked days me woked
Speaker 1: and wopped in the rain. That wouldn't head kill my
Speaker 1: toes began to web following that, he sings a whole
Speaker 1: song about all the ways he wants to kill her.
Speaker 1: I would never have the heart to shoot her with
Speaker 1: a gun. The way that this song is just presented
Speaker 1: as women right with my hands, all with the puta
Speaker 1: of my life, with the all a night baby is
Speaker 1: at this point in the show, especially where Humbert's word
Speaker 1: is taken at face value. Here, he's the comedic hero,
Speaker 1: the maligned husband with the loud, emasculating wife who's preventing
Speaker 1: him from doing what he wants to. I would never
Speaker 1: have Poisin. Charlotte finds Humbert's journal as normal. She's furious,
Speaker 1: But then this has also played for comedy. How don't
Speaker 1: we ever given Charlotte what ship? This happens right after
Speaker 1: she realizes her new husband wants to sexually abuse her
Speaker 1: twelve year old daughter. I mean, at this point, I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised, but Jesus, Charlotte gets hit by the car.
Speaker 1: Humbert is informed, and then the crowd laughs and laughs
Speaker 1: as he says the reprise about the song about him
Speaker 1: wanting to kill her. He gets a hotel room and
Speaker 1: tells the camp not to mention Charlotte with death, picks
Speaker 1: Lolita up and takes her to the betty By Hotel. Intermission.
Speaker 1: We're at the betty By Hotel, which is the same
Speaker 1: thing as the Enchanted Hunter's Hotel. Lolita says that Charlotte
Speaker 1: is going to and stre but she doesn't use the
Speaker 1: incest word as she does in the book. Now we
Speaker 1: get a lot more Lolita in this adaptation than we
Speaker 1: do in some others, and to be fair, we do
Speaker 1: see different sides of her emotionally. Shortly after getting to
Speaker 1: the hotel, she says that she wants to see her
Speaker 1: mom and leave the hotel. In response, Humbert sings her
Speaker 1: a song called tell Me, Tell Me to try to
Speaker 1: seduce her into not wanting to go home now. In
Speaker 1: the book, this is the scene where Humbert first rapes Lolita,
Speaker 1: and the musical is wise enough to reference it without
Speaker 1: showing anything. The way Humbert describes the moment to the audience, though,
Speaker 1: is a daunable face on my naked chest. She told
Speaker 1: me I was not the first. Oh, how innocent is
Speaker 1: the Lord? He thought he was punishing a sinner, the
Speaker 1: only lessoned my do. It's like that, And when she
Speaker 1: learns that her mother has been killed, she has a
Speaker 1: far more expressive outburst at him than in the book.
Speaker 1: You Never Get You to Get Me? Why the women
Speaker 1: always have to cry? They go straight to Beardsley, skipping
Speaker 1: the entire road trip. Lolita tries to bribe him about
Speaker 1: the play. Immediately says, I love you to increase the
Speaker 1: likelihood of getting what she wants. The scene with Lolita's
Speaker 1: head mistress on whether she can do the play or
Speaker 1: not is included, but it's turned up to an eleven.
Speaker 1: The headmistress gives Humbert an ultimatum that he must either
Speaker 1: let Dolly do the play or go to a weird
Speaker 1: class with her two nights a week where they get
Speaker 1: to the root of her sexual trauma. Like in Koper's adaptation,
Speaker 1: Quilty is very present in Beardsley. We see him at
Speaker 1: the school, and Humbert is well aware that he's around.
Speaker 1: He's not on the margins or in disguise as in
Speaker 1: other versions. Tells me about the cast. They must be
Speaker 1: quite young, butler on the inside. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: whole scene with Quilty and Lolita. Quilty openly flirt with
Speaker 1: her while they're at school, and then he sings a
Speaker 1: song called March Out of My Life about his own
Speaker 1: tortured attraction to Lolita. Meanwhile, Lolita is portrayed as far
Speaker 1: more outwardly devious than she is in Nabokov's book. She
Speaker 1: blackmails Humbert. She says she'll tell her friends about him
Speaker 1: if he doesn't pay up. He's portrayed sympath athetically as
Speaker 1: a man who is losing touch with reality and being
Speaker 1: tricked by a girl who seems to be doing absolutely fine.
Speaker 1: You cannot torment me like this. I love you too much?
Speaker 1: Is that all you have to say? I don't want
Speaker 1: to be loved so much fun at least for me.
Speaker 1: But in this scene, for all of this musical's glaring,
Speaker 1: glaring failures, I really liked the song that Lolita sings
Speaker 1: here at the height of her outward anger at Humbert.
Speaker 1: It's called all you can do is tell me you
Speaker 1: love me. That's all you can do is give me
Speaker 1: in prison and tell me it's love. I tell you
Speaker 1: it is all I can do. Think about you. Now,
Speaker 1: Humbert is still framed as pathetic, and she's framed as
Speaker 1: a mastermind. But I thought this was a solid cathartic
Speaker 1: look into Lolita's mind. Humbert gives the idea to leave town,
Speaker 1: and they leave Beardsley, just as in the book. She
Speaker 1: gets away at three years pass Humbert runs into Lolita's
Speaker 1: old friend Mona from Beardsley. Fun fact, this is played
Speaker 1: by Judy Garland's daughter Laura left. Mona tells her that
Speaker 1: Lolita ran away with Quilty. Humbert kills Quilty before going
Speaker 1: to see Lolita, and Lolita has just heard about Quiality's murder.
Speaker 1: When Humbert arrives, Lolita refers to Quilty's attempt to coerce
Speaker 1: her into being in pornography as group activity, but she
Speaker 1: says that she forgives him what he was fun. At
Speaker 1: the end, Humbert is arrested in front of Lolita and
Speaker 1: the show is over, just like in the Kuper movie,
Speaker 1: Lolita Lives. Yea. I mean, what else is there to say?
Speaker 1: It's all right there that this was truly a springtime
Speaker 1: for hitler attempt to make one of the most hideous
Speaker 1: crimes a person can commit into a lighthearted musical that
Speaker 1: blames the child that, in the case of Denise Nickerson,
Speaker 1: looks and sounds very much like a child for her
Speaker 1: own abuse. Koper's adaptation looks deeply nuanced by comparison, and
Speaker 1: the story behind the scenes was just as unsettling. I
Speaker 1: mentioned a net Farah earlier, the original Lolita in Lolita
Speaker 1: My Love and the girl who appears on the poster
Speaker 1: even after being replaced. We'll be talking to her at
Speaker 1: length in our episode on the actors who have played
Speaker 1: Lolita in the past. But I wanted to share this
Speaker 1: here because in the story of this musical, she is
Speaker 1: generally reduced to a footnote in the already hard to
Speaker 1: access history of the show. And that's not fair because
Speaker 1: the press clipping I quoted earlier about her looking twenty
Speaker 1: four more than sixteen as the reason for her dismissal
Speaker 1: was not the case at all. Parah would have been
Speaker 1: fifteen going on sixteen at this time, a minor with
Speaker 1: very little control over how she was styled. She's now
Speaker 1: a casting director and producer in Los Angeles who goes
Speaker 1: by Chris Gilmore, and she has a new project called
Speaker 1: Blood Pageant starring Snoop Dog. I know she rocks. We
Speaker 1: caught up over the summer and she explained the circumstances
Speaker 1: of her dismissal from Lolita, My love. Had you read
Speaker 1: the book before going into the show or was or
Speaker 1: had you seen the movie from the sixties or so?
Speaker 1: I never read the book And when I Allen asked
Speaker 1: me that, I said, no, Mr Lerner, I never read
Speaker 1: the book, and he said, well don't, He said, since
Speaker 1: you didn't, I want you to put the spin on it,
Speaker 1: you know that you and he worked with me a little.
Speaker 1: He counseled me, and you know, we did work through
Speaker 1: the problem that I had never dated. I was so
Speaker 1: virginal and perfect with that that it was something that
Speaker 1: I wasn't, you know, going to hide from him. I
Speaker 1: was saying, well, you know, approaching this, here's my thought.
Speaker 1: The There was one scene was the most risque scene
Speaker 1: we had, um where I had a little blue nightgown.
Speaker 1: It was short, but it looked like a dress and
Speaker 1: you know, thank god, it wasn't like see through or anything,
Speaker 1: but it looked like a little blue baby doll dress.
Speaker 1: It was really cute and so, um, I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be in a motel room with Humbert. Humbert, I take
Speaker 1: my hand, and believe me, they rehearsed this thing so
Speaker 1: many times because it was so important to them. How
Speaker 1: my hand raised from the bed to like get my
Speaker 1: finger and call him in enough and then the lights
Speaker 1: go out. So they never showed two people getting together anything.
Speaker 1: But it was very um it was like a ballet
Speaker 1: and uh, you know because because I well, well I'm
Speaker 1: jumping ahead though, I go, what's what's the snaps on
Speaker 1: the top of my nightgown. What they had this? What
Speaker 1: did they do to it? And nobody wanted to tell me.
Speaker 1: And this is a hell of a way to hit
Speaker 1: it on an actress, but you know, um, I went
Speaker 1: around and then somebody said, well, Mr Learner will come in,
Speaker 1: and so he told me, well, the snaps are in
Speaker 1: the top because you're gonna drop your nightgown. You're gonna
Speaker 1: rip it off and drop it in that scene rather
Speaker 1: than I said, but yeah, but we rehearsed for three
Speaker 1: days how to lift my finger to call him to
Speaker 1: the bed. You wanted it sensual, you wanted a certain way,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, I'm not gonna lift
Speaker 1: my finger. You know, I was I trained method Meisner,
Speaker 1: comedy improm I added all I sang uh. And yet
Speaker 1: they they wanted me to be a stripper too, And
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with strippers, God bless him, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't a stripper and I shouldn't have had to be
Speaker 1: a stripper. I mean, you almost feel guilty, like you're
Speaker 1: killing somebody to walk away from it. And so I
Speaker 1: had this big conflict inside because everything inside of me said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to drop this outfit in front of
Speaker 1: hundreds of people. Well, you're a kid, you're fifteen, maybe sixteen,
Speaker 1: and that's not a reasonable request for a child, and
Speaker 1: it's demeaning to me. It almost it almost, um, you know,
Speaker 1: adulterates the fact that I'm a singer and actor. And
Speaker 1: if that's what people come for, then they're not coming
Speaker 1: for the rest of the art, you know. So I cried,
Speaker 1: and then I called my agent and I see him.
Speaker 1: He was on the West coast and he said, I'll
Speaker 1: be here tomorrow. I'm dropping everything. Um, he's not with
Speaker 1: him anymore. But his name was Ron. Ron was amazing,
Speaker 1: and so he flew to the coast. He said, this
Speaker 1: isn't in your contract. They can't do this to you,
Speaker 1: and you're a minor. And he had to talk with
Speaker 1: them and they said, but we have to add this
Speaker 1: hair has big box office seals. We want this, and
Speaker 1: she won't be naked, she'll have a sea through body
Speaker 1: stalking on. Well, I don't know what the difference is really.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I know and I could see your
Speaker 1: breasts and I could see your cha cha and everything else,
Speaker 1: then you're naked. You know, it doesn't matter to see
Speaker 1: through body stalking or not. And so I refused, and
Speaker 1: then I'll never forget the producer's last words. He said,
Speaker 1: well you're too virtuous. Thank you so much to Chris Gilmore,
Speaker 1: and we'll be talking more about her career and experience
Speaker 1: in Lolita soon. She has had a fascinating life so far.
Speaker 1: So there's obviously a lot to unpack with this musical.
Speaker 1: I mean, Piper, yes, but also other stuff. We're going
Speaker 1: to analyze Learner's lowly to and I'll bes Lowlita together
Speaker 1: towards the end of this episode. But one thing I
Speaker 1: want to say here is that, in spite of all
Speaker 1: the bad feedback Learner rightfully got in response to this show,
Speaker 1: almost none of it had to do with the quality
Speaker 1: of he and Barry's music. And I wouldn't call myself
Speaker 1: a musical theater expert, but I was too into Phantom
Speaker 1: of the Opera in middle school, and as such I
Speaker 1: feel qualified to comment because a lot of the music
Speaker 1: in Lolita My Love is extremely sticky, and that's another
Speaker 1: reason I'm glad a proper cast album never got released.
Speaker 1: As we're going to discuss in future episodes about how
Speaker 1: Lolita and Dolores have been remembered in music. One of
Speaker 1: the most effective ways to get bad info into the
Speaker 1: minds of the general public is to make a simple, catchy,
Speaker 1: highly repeatable song about it. Dante, Petrarch and Poe is
Speaker 1: one of the most abjectly creepy songs I have ever heard,
Speaker 1: but it's been stuck in my head for six months
Speaker 1: against my will. While Lolita My Love's Music is an
Speaker 1: extreme example of this, think of other earworms that have
Speaker 1: gotten similar mess edges across and hit songs. I literally
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly name them all. It would take all week.
Speaker 1: I mean, off the top of my head, you have
Speaker 1: every Disney Villain song ever you have, like Blurred Lines.
Speaker 1: I'm a militant feminist and I listened to that song
Speaker 1: for an entire summer. Really any like legendary seventies boomer
Speaker 1: band has a famous song that is an ode to
Speaker 1: an underage girl as an ostensibly consenting party. And then
Speaker 1: think a learner's own creepy, immortal hit the song Thank
Speaker 1: Heaven for Little Girls from g I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: this song in a very long time, and so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna share some of the lyrics here. Thank Heaven for
Speaker 1: Little Girls. They grow up in the most delightful way.
Speaker 1: Those little eyes so helpless and appealing when they were
Speaker 1: flashing send you crashing through the ceiling Nabokov. Why did
Speaker 1: we hire this man? I mean the people selected for
Speaker 1: these adaptations. It's a problem. So if you thought that
Speaker 1: Lolita My Love flopping would put Broadway off the whole
Speaker 1: story for another generation, you would be incorrect. Just ten
Speaker 1: years later, a handful of years after, in a Book
Speaker 1: of Death, then a Book of Estate, that is to say,
Speaker 1: Vera and Dmitrina book off. At that point approved playwright
Speaker 1: Edward Albi to do a very different, gritty, non musical
Speaker 1: play adaptation, and spoiler alert, it also never makes it
Speaker 1: to Broadway, but for different reasons. Allow me to explain
Speaker 1: and what must be one of the best hidden secrets
Speaker 1: of Broadway casting shame Albe's Humbert. Humbert is Donald Sutherland,
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, and his Lolita is played by Blanche Baker, who,
Speaker 1: at the time of this production was around twenty four
Speaker 1: years old. Donald Sutherland could not be reached for this podcast,
Speaker 1: but we know about the behind the scenes of this
Speaker 1: production was that, like Lolita My Love, it was incredibly tumultuous.
Speaker 1: Albie had the full cooperation of the nabookof Estate, but
Speaker 1: at this point the primary contact was in a book
Speaker 1: off son Dimitri, whose track record overseeing adaptations was is mixed.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a great period in the career or life
Speaker 1: of Edward Albi, who had gone through a period of
Speaker 1: extreme success with works like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties eight won a Pulitzer in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five for a play called Seascape. He was a
Speaker 1: master of dialogue and style, but not necessarily of adaptation,
Speaker 1: albeit had some success adapting Carson mccullors to the stage,
Speaker 1: and another with Everything in the Garden from a play
Speaker 1: by Giles Cooper, but his attempt to adapt Truman Capote's
Speaker 1: Breakfast at Tiffany's in nineteen sixty six never even opened
Speaker 1: on Broadway, and his attempt at Nabukov's Lolita in eighty
Speaker 1: one only ran twelve shows before closing. Albie's strength was
Speaker 1: his own voice, a leader in the theater of the absurd, who,
Speaker 1: in this Jamie's opinion, had such a distinct voice that
Speaker 1: it seemed to kind of chafe with the very distinct
Speaker 1: voice of Nabukov he was trying to adapt. Albi was
Speaker 1: very edgy and very sharp, unaff aid to show and
Speaker 1: simulate sex, to shock his audience, the same things that
Speaker 1: Nabokov intentionally hid behind curtains of language and deception to
Speaker 1: try and fool his jury into sympathizing with the despicable protagonist.
Speaker 1: Albi's interpretation of Humbert leaves no question of who he is,
Speaker 1: and the experience of even reading it made my skin crawl.
Speaker 1: The biggest addition and change that Albi makes, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: is a character called a certain Gentleman, a narrator to
Speaker 1: the story who is meant to be a stand in
Speaker 1: for Nabokov himself, who guides Humbert Humbert through the play
Speaker 1: and exposes him to the audience for the monster he is. Ordinarily,
Speaker 1: Humbert is our narrator, and he manipulates us into seeing
Speaker 1: the events of Lolita his way. Albi takes the route
Speaker 1: of using the character of a certain Gentleman to show
Speaker 1: us how the author of the show is manipulating Humbert,
Speaker 1: who in turn is manipulating us the audience. A certain
Speaker 1: Gentleman will say things like tiss tist, tist dirty old man.
Speaker 1: When Humbert says something that is clearly reflecting the mindset
Speaker 1: of a child sex abuser, and this kind of creates
Speaker 1: this air of distance and annoyance that a certain gentleman
Speaker 1: has with the protagonist. And I was pretty fascinated by
Speaker 1: that choice, because I think it helps in some ways
Speaker 1: and in hurts in others. It's definitely the clearest tool
Speaker 1: I've ever seen used to make it clear that Humbert
Speaker 1: is not reliable, is not noble, is not an artist.
Speaker 1: But it also strangely works against the production by having
Speaker 1: it made constantly clear that another person is making Humbert's
Speaker 1: decisions for him. It almost succeeds more in making us
Speaker 1: question the bulk off than the child sexual abuser he's
Speaker 1: writing about. It creates a strange amount of distance. It's
Speaker 1: a choice. It's effective in some moments and then in
Speaker 1: others completely distances you from Humbert's evilness. It's also worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that Albi was suffering from alcoholism rather badly at
Speaker 1: the time of this production, and is constantly undergoing rewrites
Speaker 1: to get the play to where it needed to be. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Donald Sutherland was rumored to be putting pressure on Alby
Speaker 1: to make Humbert more likable, which was definitely not to be.
Speaker 1: But that is another interesting trend in the adaptations. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants to play Humbert until they're playing him all sudden done.
Speaker 1: There were a number of different scripts written in this
Speaker 1: play is Quick March to Death in one version of
Speaker 1: which ended up getting published. That's the one that I
Speaker 1: read for this podcast. Albe is also the first and
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, the only gay man who has worked
Speaker 1: on a lolit To adaptation at the highest level. I
Speaker 1: got a little more context on this show from Jacob Holder,
Speaker 1: the executive director of the Albi Foundation. I'll be passed
Speaker 1: away in and over the summer. He talked to me
Speaker 1: about what that play was like and where it fell
Speaker 1: in Albi and Lolita's career. You worked with him from
Speaker 1: oh one uh through his death. I guess I am
Speaker 1: looking for I guess some perspective on what you feel
Speaker 1: drew him to this material, to Lolita in the first place.
Speaker 1: So he got through a really bad period in the
Speaker 1: nine eighties where American theaters wouldn't touch his work. But
Speaker 1: Lolita is one of three plays that are really seen
Speaker 1: as the period right before his fall from popularity, and
Speaker 1: and the reason I reread that piece in the biography
Speaker 1: to make sure that I wasn't. He hated when people
Speaker 1: did too much analyzing with his own personal life in
Speaker 1: terms of how that relates to his work, because he
Speaker 1: didn't believe in the concept um and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to add a layer on that he didn't himself suggest,
Speaker 1: but his drinking was out of control during that time period,
Speaker 1: so Lolita, he may already noticed his version of it.
Speaker 1: He had intended to be at least a three act play,
Speaker 1: and he intended it for it to be over the
Speaker 1: course of two evenings, which when I read about that,
Speaker 1: I've done as much research as I like, I could
Speaker 1: spend any time doing trying to find what version would
Speaker 1: have taken two nights. And while I didn't do that,
Speaker 1: I found the original, which is a three act version,
Speaker 1: and I read both that and I read what is considered.
Speaker 1: You know what anyone can put on if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: which is the dramas play service acting addition, that's to act.
Speaker 1: But you're dealing obviously the question of like how did
Speaker 1: the creators feel about their workforces? But wound up occurring
Speaker 1: the nature obviously of their art versus commercial sensibility is
Speaker 1: always going to be strongly at war. So if you
Speaker 1: have a producer who's terrified, if you think, okay, this
Speaker 1: is great, this is risking material that will bring in
Speaker 1: an audience. But I can't let this thing be three
Speaker 1: hours long or four hours long because it's going to
Speaker 1: bore everybody and we're gonna get reviews. Let's say that
Speaker 1: this is a whole I'm sure we need to make
Speaker 1: this thing tight. And then you have Donald Sutherland, probably
Speaker 1: in his ego, thinking all right, I'm already playing somebody
Speaker 1: who's going to be perceived as horribly reprehensible, so I
Speaker 1: need to make this thing as funny as possible or
Speaker 1: as light as possible, or you know, almost I'm going
Speaker 1: to play it in a way that shows that I'm
Speaker 1: also sort of outside of it and I'm uncommenting on
Speaker 1: it who my performance. So, my guests is that there
Speaker 1: was a lack of trust in the material from the
Speaker 1: actor who wanted to show his best, because obviously all
Speaker 1: actors are concerned about how they're being perceived, because if
Speaker 1: it goes wrongly, not only could it be perceived that
Speaker 1: the acting is bad, but also you know, he who
Speaker 1: wants to be then associated that the last role, as
Speaker 1: you know, one of the more famous pedophiles in the literature,
Speaker 1: so that can impact his career, whereas for Edward it
Speaker 1: would be all about getting as much to the brutal
Speaker 1: truth of what this piece is supposed to be communicating.
Speaker 1: But I think that Edward was probably like looking for
Speaker 1: the best possible Broadway producer at the time to work with,
Speaker 1: and it was just not a match made in heaven.
Speaker 1: I guess how involved was the in the Book of
Speaker 1: Estate in Um, you know, reading through drafts and um
Speaker 1: interacting with play as it was developed. As far as
Speaker 1: I got a sense of it, it it wasn't friendly on
Speaker 1: either side. It was very much an aggressive thing. But
Speaker 1: he conceded to just changing it to a certain gentleman
Speaker 1: and you know, draw from it what you will, which
Speaker 1: is obviously that it's supposed to be a stand in
Speaker 1: for the writer. The other thing is not only is
Speaker 1: it that you know a C. G or the end
Speaker 1: can be a stand in almost an interview, but obviously
Speaker 1: from from moment one in the play he says, this
Speaker 1: is the character of my own creation. So you're dealing
Speaker 1: now also with Will Wait a second, how can you
Speaker 1: how can you actually be even at all judgmental of
Speaker 1: this character because this character, essentially we're being told it
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist. You do. It's just you at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it's it's the dark recesses of
Speaker 1: your mind. It's not his. You're in control of all
Speaker 1: of this. And what's fascinating is that Edward would have
Speaker 1: been very aware of the rules of you know, you
Speaker 1: present the universe, and you stick to those rules. You
Speaker 1: don't worry about the universe we live in. That's for
Speaker 1: outside the feeder doors. Once you step inside the space,
Speaker 1: forget you, forget your more A's, forget your your ethical
Speaker 1: co your ten commandments. It's about the universe on stage.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think he ever did that. He
Speaker 1: clearly didn't do anything with Lolita that he truly intended,
Speaker 1: because there I go again where I don't get why
Speaker 1: he allowed the two accussions to be published if he
Speaker 1: said that was sort of the bastard accident at the
Speaker 1: end of this terrible journey to the bad producer and
Speaker 1: a bad actor, Thank you so much to Jacob Holder.
Speaker 1: So what happens in this adaptation, I won't rehash the
Speaker 1: whole thing for you, because there's no horrifying music. But
Speaker 1: it's very different from Lowly to My Love, And I'd
Speaker 1: like to point out some of the bigger subversions from
Speaker 1: other interpretations. For better and for worse. We already talked
Speaker 1: about a certain gentleman who is on stage with Humbert
Speaker 1: for the entire show, but there are other elements worth
Speaker 1: noting as well. Having read the play a couple of times,
Speaker 1: it feels pretty clear to me that Nabokov and I'll
Speaker 1: be clash in storytelling style. The swears and the forth
Speaker 1: right sexuality, constant references to erections on stage, overt racism,
Speaker 1: and homophobic comments to turn an audience against a character.
Speaker 1: These are all very Albi style choices, but they're almost
Speaker 1: certainly something that Nabokov would not have liked. Now, we'll
Speaker 1: get to the choices that I think Albie makes somewhat
Speaker 1: effectively in a minute, but I just want to lay
Speaker 1: it out. The show is a failure in more ways
Speaker 1: than not. While Albi lets us know that Humbert is
Speaker 1: an irredeemable criminal in no uncertain terms, he succeeds in
Speaker 1: making the rest of the characters from the story leagues
Speaker 1: more unlikable than they were in the original storytelling, particularly
Speaker 1: Charlotte and Dolores Hayes. Charlotte Hayes is explicitly racist in
Speaker 1: nearly every scene she appears in in the Albi play,
Speaker 1: particularly when speaking to her black housekeeper Louise, and Lolita
Speaker 1: makes similar comments later in the show that are not
Speaker 1: present in the look. They both make anti Semitic comments
Speaker 1: as well, or a certain gentleman when this happens, as
Speaker 1: if to say, isn't that awful? I would never say that,
Speaker 1: and it is awful. It's fucking terrible. But since this
Speaker 1: show isn't making us watch Humbert manipulate this narrative, we
Speaker 1: are instead watching a certain gentleman do that. This succeeds
Speaker 1: only in making us hate Charlotte and Lolita. I don't
Speaker 1: know what Albie is really going for here, but the
Speaker 1: comments that are made by these characters are absolutely horrific. Now,
Speaker 1: going back to the book quickly, that is not to
Speaker 1: say that Charlotte does not make funked up racial and
Speaker 1: anti Semitic comments in the nbak of book. There are
Speaker 1: several moments where she hints at anti Semitism. In particular,
Speaker 1: and these are obviously worth singling out and criticizing. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a quick insight on that topic
Speaker 1: from Dana Dragonoiu, a Nabucovian we spoke with in episode two,
Speaker 1: about the comments that Charlotte makes in the book, something
Speaker 1: that I certainly didn't pick up on my first you know,
Speaker 1: several reads of Lolita, but the references to you know,
Speaker 1: his feelings on anti Semitism, Yes, I mean um, Um,
Speaker 1: he was very progressive on race for a man is
Speaker 1: of his time, like exceptionally so and um, in part
Speaker 1: he inherited that from his father. Uh So, Nabokov himself
Speaker 1: comes from a very kind of Caucasian aristocratic, upper middle
Speaker 1: class um background. But his father, UM was very close
Speaker 1: friends with a lot of Jewish intellectuals, and his father
Speaker 1: put his career on the line and even lost a
Speaker 1: lot by reporting very fearlessly on the on the Mendel
Speaker 1: Bailis affair. So his own father championed Jewish Jewish causes
Speaker 1: for the entirety of his life. Um. It is for
Speaker 1: that reason that Nabokov's are able to sail on one
Speaker 1: of the last boats sailing out of France because the
Speaker 1: Jewish league had paid for them in in recognition of
Speaker 1: what the father had done, and Nabokov himself marries a
Speaker 1: Jewish woman in spite of the fact that he knew
Speaker 1: that the female members of his family would not approve
Speaker 1: of it. Thank you again to Dana. So Edward Albee
Speaker 1: is not inventing this within Charlotte Hayes, but he is
Speaker 1: turning it up to an eleven and using every tool
Speaker 1: at his disposal to get the audience to actively root
Speaker 1: for Charlotte's demise, And the way I was reading it
Speaker 1: by the time she's killed, it's a relief. Albeit seems
Speaker 1: to be using in sensitive language and views in his
Speaker 1: characters to get you to root for a child sexual
Speaker 1: abuser to murder them, which is a moral hedge maze
Speaker 1: I wasn't even aware existed. There is a lot to
Speaker 1: be said about how I'll be treated race in his work.
Speaker 1: He both during his life and later with his estate,
Speaker 1: has been resistant to casting black actors in some of
Speaker 1: his greatest works, especially Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, And
Speaker 1: this was a decision that was widely criticized and eventually overturned.
Speaker 1: So there's a ton to talk about there, and about
Speaker 1: racism in casting on Broadway in general, that I don't
Speaker 1: have time to tackle in this episode, but I would
Speaker 1: start by referring you to a piece by writer Kyle
Speaker 1: Turner called Who's Afraid of White Fragility. That's a good
Speaker 1: place to start if you're interested in learning more. I
Speaker 1: will link that in the notes. Albie does succeed in
Speaker 1: making it the clearest of all of the adaptations. I've
Speaker 1: encountered that Humbert. Humbert is an unreliable narrator and a
Speaker 1: despicable person, but he still fails to bring Lolita to
Speaker 1: the forefront in any meaningful way. Let me give you
Speaker 1: some examples of what I'm talking about here. Here is
Speaker 1: an exchange from the play. Humbert says that darling child
Speaker 1: is a temptress. She is an infant. Then a certain
Speaker 1: gentleman replies, no, really, she looks like an ordinary little
Speaker 1: girl to me, he turns to the audience. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: sure she does, and to you too as well, I
Speaker 1: dare say, unless unless I am not alone, Unless there
Speaker 1: is one of you out there like me, one of
Speaker 1: you who knows, one of you who senses the beauty,
Speaker 1: the thrill of the danger. Is there a pedophile in
Speaker 1: the house? That's right? That line ends with parentheses loud hiss.
Speaker 1: The biggest change from the source material, besides the addition
Speaker 1: of a certain gentleman, is probably Charlotte's death. Instead of
Speaker 1: the incredibly convenient death that Humbert, Humbert constructs where she
Speaker 1: is hit by a car at just the right moment.
Speaker 1: Albe has Charlotte pull a gun on Humbert when she
Speaker 1: learns of his diaries that are condemning her and planning
Speaker 1: to rape Lolita. While doing so, In this version, she
Speaker 1: falls down the stairs and dies of a head injury,
Speaker 1: and the impact of Charlotte dying right in front of
Speaker 1: us is much different than what we experience in the
Speaker 1: book and some of the other adaptations. In a roundabout way,
Speaker 1: seeing her die before our eyes validates Humbert's claim that
Speaker 1: her death was a convenient win for him and gets
Speaker 1: rid of all of the ambiguity and suspicion of Humbert
Speaker 1: and questions that arrived from Charlotte's death happening outside of
Speaker 1: the jurors plain site. We see other things like Charlotte's
Speaker 1: funeral in detail, Humbert telling a certain gentleman that he
Speaker 1: intends to abduct Lolita, and we also see this I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding. Charlotte sits straight up in her coffin, calls
Speaker 1: Humbert a molester, and says she will see him in Hell.
Speaker 1: I especially don't like how this adaptation treats Lolita. For me,
Speaker 1: the intense detailed descriptions of Humbert's intent to abuse her,
Speaker 1: the actual nudity on stage of Blanche Baker or Lolita,
Speaker 1: as well as a certain gentleman asking Humbert how she
Speaker 1: was quote unquote indicates that i'll Be clearly wants to
Speaker 1: confront the audience with how disgusting Humbert's crimes are, but
Speaker 1: still manages to paint out Lolita as the seductress in
Speaker 1: the process, and even exploits her body to make his point.
Speaker 1: This just did not work. We understand Humbert's monstrosity, but
Speaker 1: the way i'll be writes, we are not encouraged to
Speaker 1: have any empathy for his victim. You can read it
Speaker 1: if you really want to, but it's like gross. It
Speaker 1: just it goes so far in the other direction that
Speaker 1: even reading it on the page was deeply unsettling, because
Speaker 1: it just feels exploitative and understands that it's exploitative, but
Speaker 1: keeps doubling and doubling and doubling down. There are some
Speaker 1: scenes where it truly just felt to me like Edward
Speaker 1: Albe was trying to think of the most disgusting, gross,
Speaker 1: horrific thing he could think of and then just made
Speaker 1: someone do that. Final thing that struck me about this
Speaker 1: adaptation was the final time that we see Lolita on stage.
Speaker 1: At the end of a scene, Humbert, still accompanied by
Speaker 1: a certain gentleman, literally will's Lolita away before going to
Speaker 1: Quilty's mansion to murder him. After we've seen her seventeen
Speaker 1: and pregnant. Have this interaction with Humbert, Lolita fades from
Speaker 1: the story, just as she does in the book, but
Speaker 1: in a much more self aware way than we see
Speaker 1: at other points. Here's a bit from this scene. Lolita says,
Speaker 1: you can tell them all about what I'm like in bed,
Speaker 1: and he can tell you. Humbert replies, you are vanishing,
Speaker 1: and the stage directions indicate that the lights begin to
Speaker 1: go down on Lolita. Lolita says, huh, pardon, and her
Speaker 1: spotlight continues to fade. Humbert says goodbye. Lolita. Hey, Lolita,
Speaker 1: says humber It says, you have disappeared, and by this
Speaker 1: time he is right. Lolita is completely engulfed in darkness.
Speaker 1: There is still one more scene after this, Humbert goes
Speaker 1: to Quality's house to murder him. After he's killed, a
Speaker 1: certain gentleman tells Humbert what Lolita's fate was, her death,
Speaker 1: her baby. Humbert asks what he should do next, and
Speaker 1: a certain gentleman, the narrator of this production, tells Humbert
Speaker 1: trigger warning that Humbert is going to masturbate to Lolita
Speaker 1: over Quiality's dead body, and he starts to do that,
Speaker 1: and that's the end of the play. Now it's hard
Speaker 1: to compare and contrast these failed Broadway shows. Not only
Speaker 1: are they completely different genres of theater, but it's impossible
Speaker 1: to watch them since they never actually opened. I do
Speaker 1: find it interesting that the actresses cast to play Lolita,
Speaker 1: at least in the case of Denise Nickerson in Lolita
Speaker 1: My Love and Blanche Baker in Edward Albe's Lolita, we're
Speaker 1: both styled to look very similar to Sue Lyon in
Speaker 1: the Kuberc adaptation. The Blonde Bombshell approach that completely contradicts
Speaker 1: Nabokov's description of Dolores, a lanky Burnett who is by
Speaker 1: all accounts an ordinary looking kid. That's a whole issue
Speaker 1: we're going to keep discussing in future episodes, and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons it's indisputably always going to be an
Speaker 1: issue adapting Lolita with actors. Part of what makes the
Speaker 1: book so horrifying is that we know that Dolores Hayes
Speaker 1: is a twelve year old, and reflecting that on stage,
Speaker 1: no matter how sensitively done, with a child who is twelve,
Speaker 1: is inarguably unsafe. Nickerson does a good job in the
Speaker 1: part of Lolita in the rehearsal recording that you can hear,
Speaker 1: but the message of the show isn't just muddled. It
Speaker 1: tries to have a child at the age that the
Speaker 1: book indicates also matched the uncanny seductress rule that Humbert.
Speaker 1: Humbert casts her in and tries to have both be true.
Speaker 1: Not only does it not work, it makes a listener
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable to hear a kid have to play. So
Speaker 1: not only is this a failure on the writer's part
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that Humbert's account is unreliable. I think the
Speaker 1: tonal dissonance and how Nickerson is presented by Humbert and
Speaker 1: quilty and Lolita my love as this seductress, with how
Speaker 1: we see her on stage as a kid singing about
Speaker 1: how she never wanted any of this. It scans very
Speaker 1: odd because it is odd not just because a girl
Speaker 1: of Dolores Jeyes's age can't contain multitudes, but because having
Speaker 1: Humbert's false reality projected onto a thirteen year old as
Speaker 1: if it's fact, and a lighthearted fact that that is
Speaker 1: so disorienting that you almost have to laugh and hope
Speaker 1: that Nickerson was protected behind the scenes. Given Chris Gilmore's
Speaker 1: account of her experiences. Then in Alpiece Lolita, the dissonance
Speaker 1: is a little different. We are absolutely led to believe
Speaker 1: that Lolita brings her ordeal onto herself, but the friction
Speaker 1: between Humbert, Humbert and his own author is the strongest
Speaker 1: relationship focus upon. Now. There's no public record of Baker's
Speaker 1: performance in Albi's Lolita, but playing the role at twenty four,
Speaker 1: even though Baker did tend to play younger roles at
Speaker 1: this point in her career, there's no doubt that an
Speaker 1: audience would be able to tell the difference between an
Speaker 1: actor of Denise Nickerson's age and one of Blante Baker's.
Speaker 1: This is not a slight to Baker at all, and
Speaker 1: I think in terms of production ethics, it's the responsible choice.
Speaker 1: Especially with the gritty, gross choices that Albe makes, Having
Speaker 1: an actual minor in that role night after night would
Speaker 1: be as unacceptable as Nabukov thought it would be in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies. But there's still a conflict here
Speaker 1: seeing an actress in her twenties, even one who appears
Speaker 1: to be in her teens, act in the role of
Speaker 1: seductress with Humbert. Humbert strikes a slightly different tone on
Speaker 1: stage than the twelve year old we hear about in
Speaker 1: the book, and this repeated tendency to show sexualized adults
Speaker 1: as representative of children creates a dissonance that strikes with
Speaker 1: actual children. I mean, you can go to Riverdale for that.
Speaker 1: You can go to any show about teenagers that's on
Speaker 1: broadcast television where all of the quote unquote teenagers are
Speaker 1: played by people ten years older than them. There have
Speaker 1: been so many listeners of this show who have reached
Speaker 1: out to me not having read the book before, saying
Speaker 1: that their cultural osmosis of this story of Lolita was
Speaker 1: that Lolita was about a purvy older man hitting on
Speaker 1: and having sex with a teenage girl presented to the
Speaker 1: viewer as sexy. As we all know now five episodes in,
Speaker 1: that's not the plot of the book, but the popular images,
Speaker 1: even up through the Alba production in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: reinforce that common takeaway. So much of this story's legacy
Speaker 1: are driven by aesthetics, and the book off was well
Speaker 1: aware of that. In the afterward to Lolita, called on
Speaker 1: a book entitled Lolita, he writes this, for me, a
Speaker 1: work of fiction exists only in so far is it
Speaker 1: affords what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss. That is
Speaker 1: a sense of being somehow somewhere connected with other states
Speaker 1: of being where art, curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy is the norm.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of why I think this story
Speaker 1: is considered by many to be unadaptable. It is about
Speaker 1: crimes so horrific that acting them out on stage with
Speaker 1: actors the same age as the characters is unthinkable, and
Speaker 1: yet they persist finding workaround using actors of the correct age.
Speaker 1: For Lolita and watering the material down, or conversely, using
Speaker 1: an older actor for Lolita and misrepresenting the reality of
Speaker 1: the story's abject horror. And I'll be clear here, the
Speaker 1: abuse of a person and their opportunes is no less
Speaker 1: horrifying and contemptible. But there's an additional issue the men
Speaker 1: adapting this story right with the assumption that Lolita is
Speaker 1: not just able to consent, but is actively seducing Humbered,
Speaker 1: just as he says in the text. I'll take you
Speaker 1: back to that quote from Norman Twain from earlier. We've
Speaker 1: got to have a girl who makes a man forget
Speaker 1: the moral conventions of society. But it's got to be
Speaker 1: a complete mental situation. If Lelite's five ft five with
Speaker 1: a great figure, it would be perfectly normal for from
Speaker 1: Bear to go after her. This was an attitude that
Speaker 1: existed loudly and commonly at this time. So a live
Speaker 1: action interpretation of this story, particularly a nightly one, becomes
Speaker 1: a basically unworkable idea from a performance perspective. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: personally as an animation writer, I think it's animation or
Speaker 1: bust on this one. But that's another episode. But that
Speaker 1: isn't to say, if this live action issue were miraculously resolved,
Speaker 1: that these Broadway attempts would have been successful. There is
Speaker 1: no way, because there is the and I hate to
Speaker 1: use that these one oh one terms with you. You're
Speaker 1: smarter than this, but I have to use it. There
Speaker 1: is the male gaze of it all, with the way
Speaker 1: Learner and Barry in nineteen seventy one and Albe in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one are undoubtedly coming from a place of
Speaker 1: prioritizing Humbert's voice and predicament, though with very different approaches.
Speaker 1: Unlike Nabokov's book, Lolita or Dolores isn't really hiding in
Speaker 1: the pages of these plays. She's not there at all.
Speaker 1: Quality's role is inflated in both Unreliability is attempted to
Speaker 1: be addressed, but ultimately either ends up endearing you to
Speaker 1: Humbert or making him seem less responsible for his choices
Speaker 1: by including a writer on stage. And as always, Lolita's
Speaker 1: role is reduced to that of seductress who really barely appears.
Speaker 1: Before we leave this chapter in Lolita adaptation history, I
Speaker 1: wanted to share another small slice of an interview I
Speaker 1: did with Blanche Baker, who played Lolita in the Albe
Speaker 1: play and as an Emmy winning actor and professor. I'll
Speaker 1: remind you here that Baker was the daughter of an
Speaker 1: actress named Carol Baker, whose part in the movie Baby
Speaker 1: Doll in the nineteen fifties was a huge influence on
Speaker 1: how Sue Lion was styled in Kubrick's Low To in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. And this family through line of these
Speaker 1: very specific ragid sexual aesthetics being asked of their performances
Speaker 1: is not lost on Blanche Baker, reflecting an issue had
Speaker 1: by virtually every actor who has played Lolita that I've
Speaker 1: spoken to. Her issues with taking on the role had
Speaker 1: much more to do with her treatment by the media
Speaker 1: and the public. Unlike others, Baker had a generally positive
Speaker 1: experience with the casting crew of the Albie production. Here's
Speaker 1: a little slice of our discussion about her experience with
Speaker 1: the media around the time of this show in the
Speaker 1: show runs. From what I've seen, the show ran for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, um after Boston previews. What was
Speaker 1: that switch from Boston to New York Like that was
Speaker 1: the onslaught of publicity, So that was that was very difficult, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and I had to be very careful. I
Speaker 1: was a young girls didn't have a lot of money
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I was being followed after show and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I had to have people meet me. I remember,
Speaker 1: it was really not so pleasant that aspect once I
Speaker 1: was before I got on the stage, and after I
Speaker 1: got off the stage. It really wasn't a heck of
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Any time I went to a party,
Speaker 1: people were really looking at me, so I stopped going
Speaker 1: to parties. I really became more of a reck louse
Speaker 1: than you would imagine because I felt like I couldn't
Speaker 1: live up to what people expected. That was my own insanity,
Speaker 1: I guess, um, but I felt like they would expect
Speaker 1: me to be prettier, expect me to be you know, sexy,
Speaker 1: or forget that I was an actress, and I was
Speaker 1: just very uncomfortable for a while in my own skin.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Blanche Baker, and like Chris Gilmore,
Speaker 1: we will be speaking more with her soon. Okay, I
Speaker 1: know this is getting to be a long episode again,
Speaker 1: but really quick. Lolita has made other attempts on stage
Speaker 1: over the years, with varying, usually low degrees of success,
Speaker 1: that I would like to touch on really quickly, but
Speaker 1: not as in depth because they are in no way
Speaker 1: as notorious as the two shows we've talked about so far.
Speaker 1: But for the sake of completeness, it is a weird list,
Speaker 1: all right, Let's roll through these. There is the Russian
Speaker 1: opera of Lolita from by composer ro Dion Shedrin, which
Speaker 1: debuted at the Swedish Royal Opera with a Swedish translation
Speaker 1: of the Russian libretto. Lolita was played by a twenty
Speaker 1: five year old soprano. This is arguably one of the
Speaker 1: more successful and enduring adaptations, as it still plays today
Speaker 1: every once in a while. But that's not to say
Speaker 1: that it gets the point of the story. It's been
Speaker 1: performed in Russian, Swedish and German. Now, speaking to this
Speaker 1: problematic approach, let's hear from Shedrin on his interpretation of
Speaker 1: the story. It feels like a nostalgia for beauty. It
Speaker 1: is a symbol really for me. First, really, Lolita as
Speaker 1: a character is less of a human being but rather
Speaker 1: an archetype symbol of beauty, but a fleeting beauty. Okay, yikes.
Speaker 1: And that's also not to say that the reviews of
Speaker 1: this show were good here's what Michael Walsh of Time said. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the novel has more music on a single page. Shedren's lazy,
Speaker 1: imptant scores loudish when it's not downright sullen, So there's that. Also,
Speaker 1: it's four hours long. Moving on, there are several ballet
Speaker 1: productions that I've found records of, one which was choreographed
Speaker 1: by British dancer Kathy Marston in in Denmark that, based
Speaker 1: on its trailer, really seems to play up Lolita's role
Speaker 1: of seductress as a torturer of Humbert. She even like
Speaker 1: grins maniacally at the camera at the end. Brought another
Speaker 1: attempted opera in Boston from composer John Harbison, which ends
Speaker 1: up getting canceled when the clergy child abuse scandal in
Speaker 1: Boston happened in two thousand and two. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, a lot of attempts. Writer Michael West staged
Speaker 1: some of Nabokov's unused screenplay from the nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: movie in Dublin, Ireland, and people didn't like it. Reviewer
Speaker 1: Hiroko Mikami said, in particular the way that sex was
Speaker 1: staged between Humbert and Lolita which already I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, but Maccami says, the way it was staged,
Speaker 1: he felt clearly placed the blame of a rape onto
Speaker 1: the victim. Also in two thousand three, Russian director Victor
Speaker 1: Sobchuk wrote a stage adaptation that gets rid of quality
Speaker 1: entirely and changes the setting to England in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's. Also in two thousand three, Italian choreographer David
Speaker 1: Bombana did a seventy minute ballet adaptation that skewed extremely
Speaker 1: erotic based on clips I've seen with Lolita and Humbert
Speaker 1: looking very sensual. There's a number of duet dance numbers
Speaker 1: that have been inspired by Lolita and Humbert over the years,
Speaker 1: all of which have a very forbidden love tone. All
Speaker 1: links on below. It's a little more intriguing. There was
Speaker 1: a man show from two thousand nine written by Richard
Speaker 1: Nelson that features Humbert Humbert speaking to the audience from
Speaker 1: a prison cell. Years later. This production was pretty well reviewed,
Speaker 1: and while Dolores obviously never appears on stage, it couldn't
Speaker 1: be clearer, according to the reviews of the time, that
Speaker 1: Humbert is projecting and unreliable and Brian Cox played him
Speaker 1: here who is the daddy in succession? And we know
Speaker 1: he can play a really mean guy. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, American composer Joshua Feinberg and choreographer Johann Saunier
Speaker 1: made a quote unquote imagined opera in New Jersey that
Speaker 1: was a multimedia production. Humbert Humbert uses screens and dance
Speaker 1: and video to demonstrate his descent and obsession. This was
Speaker 1: pretty well reviewed in the New York Times, but given
Speaker 1: how reviewers Steve Smith characterizes the source material, I don't
Speaker 1: really know who to trust here. Here's how Steve Smith
Speaker 1: talks about the story. Is Humbert Humbert a suave, calculating
Speaker 1: seducer or a pretentious, delusional monster? Mighty also be a
Speaker 1: relatable victim, not only of his own urges but also
Speaker 1: of those of Dolores Hayes, the child with whom he
Speaker 1: has obsessed. But clips from this production seemed to strike
Speaker 1: closer to the right tone. I do wish I could
Speaker 1: have seen it. And finally, there is a Minnesota comedy
Speaker 1: group called four Humors that did a three person production
Speaker 1: based on the Kubrick movie. In oh the parts are
Speaker 1: played by white guys. It's clearly in over the top
Speaker 1: comedy and like Lolita is played by a chubby guy
Speaker 1: in his thirties wearing a bikini, like I'm just, I'm just,
Speaker 1: I'm tough. I don't know about you, but I was
Speaker 1: exhausted just having to listen to that, and like, no
Speaker 1: offense if if these guys are listening, I guess, But
Speaker 1: sometimes you just get the feeling that a guy watches
Speaker 1: three episodes of Anti Python and it's like, I think
Speaker 1: I'm a comedian and it's like, no, I think you
Speaker 1: just hold prejudices from the early nineteen seventies. Whatever, I'm
Speaker 1: a comedian and this as lame as fuck. And that's
Speaker 1: the comprehensive list up until now. But all this to say,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of attempts, and on stage, none
Speaker 1: of them have been enduring. And you'll notice that there
Speaker 1: were only one or two women involved in any of
Speaker 1: the above in a creative, high level sense, which brings
Speaker 1: us to the present. The final adaptation I want to
Speaker 1: discuss is one I found to be the most intriguing.
Speaker 1: It was a revival of the Alan Jay Lerner musical
Speaker 1: Lolita My Love that was performed in New York in
Speaker 1: as a part of a celebration of his work, and
Speaker 1: the director of this production of Lolita My Love was
Speaker 1: drum roll please, a woman was not a sist. Man.
Speaker 1: Can you believe It's? Wow? It's really edible stuff. It
Speaker 1: takes sixty five years, but but you get there. The
Speaker 1: director of the revival of Lolita My Love is named
Speaker 1: Emily Maltby. She took on the challenge of creating a
Speaker 1: workshop performance of the show by cobbling and restructuring all
Speaker 1: of the drafts that Learner wrote throughout the seventies. Working
Speaker 1: with composer Eric Hogginson, Malbi managed to create a pretty
Speaker 1: contemporary version of the show that still used Learner's work exclusively,
Speaker 1: adding in a character that was a therapist speaking to
Speaker 1: Humbert to address the unreliability that goes undiscussed in the original. Again,
Speaker 1: I have not seen this show, but I know many
Speaker 1: who have, and given the fact that Maltby was only
Speaker 1: given a handful of weeks to get the production together,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a pretty unique moment in lowlit to
Speaker 1: adaptation history. We'll be talking to her more in the
Speaker 1: finale of the pod. But I wanted to end this episode,
Speaker 1: speaking with her about her process of waiting through Learner's
Speaker 1: drafts and finding stuff she could use, as well as
Speaker 1: her approach to taking on not just in the book
Speaker 1: of Lolita, but learners. Here's our discussion. I just couldn't
Speaker 1: believe that this fourteen year old girl was so was
Speaker 1: so into this, and so one of the things we
Speaker 1: did was basically I went through the script and I
Speaker 1: highlighted the moments that if I were Humbert, I would
Speaker 1: would be my like prime examples of how interested of
Speaker 1: how she behaved like a Lolita, right, how she manipulated him,
Speaker 1: how she coaxed it, whatever, how much she wanted it,
Speaker 1: how much she was into it, whatever. I found all
Speaker 1: of those moments sort of highlighted them and they were
Speaker 1: really like, you know, a passage here, an interaction here, whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we would play a little like echo of
Speaker 1: this synth music. The lights would change to like this
Speaker 1: sort of insidious green and this like stark white uplight um.
Speaker 1: And the actors playing Lolita, who I should say was
Speaker 1: twenty four, which she is very small. UM. I was
Speaker 1: very adamant from the beginning that we're not casting an
Speaker 1: underage actress. Um. But she she went from this you know, rambunctious,
Speaker 1: fourteen year old kind of energy, and she would essentially
Speaker 1: like go into like a trance. She would go into
Speaker 1: like you know, she would sort of lose all of
Speaker 1: her agency and he would um. And then she would
Speaker 1: just deliver these lines as if as if he was
Speaker 1: like puppeting them to her or parenting them to her, right,
Speaker 1: and he would like, you know, not quite as literally
Speaker 1: as like controlling her like a marionette. But that was
Speaker 1: the sort of idea was that, you know, there were
Speaker 1: these moments and we kind of I couldn't give her
Speaker 1: extra lines, I couldn't give her a voice, but I
Speaker 1: could show you that her voice was being taken from her.
Speaker 1: Maybe what you're seeing didn't actually happen in that way,
Speaker 1: you know, and and maybe he's coloring it. And so
Speaker 1: there were just these couple of moments that for him
Speaker 1: were these key moments where we just got a sense
Speaker 1: of like he was kind of manipulating the storytelling. And
Speaker 1: we had this thing in the very first song where
Speaker 1: she came out, you know, with a sweatshirt and her
Speaker 1: hair up, and then over the core of the song,
Speaker 1: the ensemble like at his commands, you know, took her
Speaker 1: hair down and took the sweatshirt off, and then he
Speaker 1: kind of um trained her to tuck her hair behind
Speaker 1: her ears, and it was just sort of this like
Speaker 1: creation of Lolita, this idea of like Lolita being a
Speaker 1: different character from Dolores. Thank you so much to Emily
Speaker 1: Maltby and we will be hearing from her soon. And
Speaker 1: if you thought we talked about the aesthetics of Lolita today, honey,
Speaker 1: buckle up. We are taking a week off next week
Speaker 1: because my brain is melting out of my ears and
Speaker 1: it's the holidays. But in our next episode, we are
Speaker 1: diving into the visual legacy of Lolita. I'm talking music,
Speaker 1: I'm talking niche fashion communities. Not that one Lolita fashion friends,
Speaker 1: but there are fashion communities as well as interviews with
Speaker 1: some of the creators and people influenced by them. That's
Speaker 1: coming up on our next episode of Lolita Podcast. Happy Holidays.
Speaker 1: Sorry my podcast is so sad. This has been a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. My name is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 1: I write and host the show. My producers are the
Speaker 1: wonderful Sophie Lichtman, Miles gray Beth and Marco Luso and
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien. My editor is the amazing Isaac Taylor. Additional
Speaker 1: research and transcription from Ben Loftus. Music is by Zoe Blade.
Speaker 1: Theme is by Brad Dickart. I wanted to also thank
Speaker 1: my guest voices on this episode as he's Laura as
Speaker 1: Humbert Humbert, Robert Evans as Vladimir Nabokop, Joel Smith, Anna
Speaker 1: jos Nier, Paula Vignalen, and Aristotle Assavedo. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.