Word: lolitas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...these problems Alan Jay Lerner seems to have turned more than once to Stanley Kubrick's movie version. The killing of Quilty takes place at the very beginning, making the entire story a flashback. Quilty is presented as a real character, popping up continuously throughout the action. The advances Lolita's mother makes to Humbert are set up almost exactly as they were in the movie...
...downright perverse. The killing of Quilty doesn't take place in an eerie, Poe-like mansion, but at a party in Arizona in front of Quilty's freaky set of disciples, thus giving Lerner a chance for a rousing song-and-dance opening. The Enchanted Hunters Motel where Lolita seduces Humbert is changed to the Bed-D-Bv Motel, full of whores and Mr. and Mrs. John Smiths. And Lerner perversely places Humbert's final visit with the married, pregnant Lolita at the very end, enabling him to stage a tear-jerking finale...
...bringing up their children, but there is a real feeling that what Humbert has done is wrong, that he has destroyed a girl's childhood. This idea is completely missing from the musical, and without it we are almost forced to root for Humbert as he tries to violate Lolita. The actual seduction is almost sickeningly sentimental...
...Humbert, who has the perfect appearance and accent for the part, and a fine singing voice as well. What he lacks, and this is probably Lerner's fault in his writing of the role, is James Mason's air of old-world degeneracy. He doesn't leer at Lolita, he gazes in wonder at her beauty...
Leonard Frey as Quilty is too young, and he simply doesn't have Peter Sellers' comic talent. Dorothy Loudon as Mrs. Haze does a fairly good Shelley Winters imitation, but she overplays a part that is overwritten in the first place. Denise Nickerson as Lolita just can't project the sexual attraction of the nymphet, and can't sing either...