Word: lolitas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...designer-jeans ads, and the popularity of "nymphet" models on Madison Ave., staging the book that coined that term once again was more good commercial sense than homage to Nabokov. Although capitalizing on this latest fashion in exploitation shouldn't have to mean joining in gleefully, through much of Lolita that's what Albee seems to be doing. Where Nabokov will choose an elegant pun, Albee lunges for the obscene gag: where Nabokov will subtly makes you think about the arbitrariness of social rules, Albee has his dirty old man turn to the audience and ask, "Is there a pedophile...
LIVING UP to the talent of a writer like Nabokov takes some care and precision. But if this excerpt from Albee's program note is any clue, his intellect is muddied with sentiment when it comes to his predecessor: "The play of Lolita is both Nabokov and Albee...But, that being as it may...the entire work is Nabokov; it is my valentine to the great man, he who suffered fools so badly and who, so clearly, loved us all, even the Humbert Humberts and the Lolitas of this world...
During the progress of Sutherland's affair with the suitably under-ripe beauty of Blanche Baker's Lolita, Albee's penchant for moralizing asserts itself, as though, to make up for his exploitation of this theme, he decides the audience must be scolded for its interest. He chooses a moral that seems both believable, and indeed, close to Nabokov's own intentions in Lolita: Humbert's love for Lolita is the futile dream of a man doomed to try to recapture his own lost past. But Albee's Nabokov character must trudge to center-stage and tell us all this...
THERE ARE nonetheless redeeming qualities to Lolita as an evening of theater. Ian Richardson surmounts the blandness Albee packs into his lines, and though we know Nabokov would never have used a phrase like "deal with," Richardson comes close to persuading us of the possibility. William Ritman's scenery--a set of four double flats turning on hinges--subliminally recalls the flipping of a book's pages as it creates a remarkable variety of oddly-shaped stage spaces. And Frank Dunlop's direction, snappy and alert, largely neutralizes the talkiness of Albee's script, keeping attention fixed on the stage...
...best qualities of this Lolita gather in its closing scene, to end the evening of literary vampirism on an up-beat note. Albee faithfully recreates Nabokov's part-farcical, part-horrifying murder scene: as the last act of his love-obsession, Humbert tracks down and decides to kill the man who had eventually helped Lolita escape him--the effeminate playwright Clare Quilty, played by William Mooney (standing in for Clive Revill in the performance I saw). Mooney enters from the top of a long, garishly majestic stairway leading down into a scene of post-party streamers, ashtrays and drinks. Sutherland...