Lolita, My Love Leaves Audiences Uncomfortable

Patrick Oliver Jones
May 31
28 min read

Alan Jay Lerner pushes the bounds of musical theater by adapting one of the most controversial novels of the 20th century.

Annette Ferra and John Neville in the 1971 Philadelphia production of Lolita, My Love — Annette Ferra and John Neville in the 1971 Philadelphia production of *Lolita, My Love*

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

That is how Lolita begins—one of the most provocative and fiercely debated novels of the 20th century. When Vladimir Nabokov’s story of obsession and manipulation was finally published in America in 1958, it caused immediate outrage and fascination. And that same year, audiences also flocked to another story involving an older man and a young girl—this time named Gigi. As I shared in the last episode, this lush, Parisian movie musical from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe won nine Oscars, including Best Picture. And here is how that film begins:

“Each time I see a little girl of five or six or seven

I can't resist the joyous urge to smile and say

Thank Heaven for little girls

For little girls get bigger everyday

Thank Heaven for little girls

They grow up in the most delightful way”

The tone couldn’t be more different between these two stories, but a similar theme runs through both: the romanticizing—and in some cases the pursuit—of adolescent girls by older men. In Gigi, it’s dressed up as charm. Whereas in Lolita, it’s more raw and unnerving. Which makes it all the more striking that the man who wrote Gigi’s sugary serenade to “little girls” — Alan Jay Lerner — would be the same one to adapt Lolita for the stage just 13 years later.

But where Gigi had offered a classic—albeit troublesome—elegance on screen, Lerner’s adaptation of Lolita was entangled in darker desires that became even more problematic when set to music. Emily Maltby, director of the 2019 off-Broadway production of Lolita, My Love, explains how this musical dynamic plays out onstage:

“There was something interesting about that kind of cognitive dissonance... taking the art form and, like, subverting everything you think you know about it to try and convince you that this thing, which you know is horrible, is somehow something else. And I thought what a cool way to sort of also interrogate the art form. And in that way, I think it, you know, made a musical of Lolita sort of an interesting exercise.”

But in 1971, Lerner’s exercise was a tense balancing act on a creative tightrope, and he knew it. So how did one of Broadway’s most celebrated lyricists try to walk that line between love and obsession, between beauty and exploitation? Well, he surrounded himself with award-winning collaborators and top-tier talent—from the cast to the creative team—and poured himself into what he believed was a worthwhile artistic endeavor.

Lolita, My Love had all the ingredients for greatness. But from the very start, the production was plagued by constant rewrites, cast changes, and creative disagreements. And audiences were not only uncomfortable, they were confused, disturbed, and sometimes gone by intermission—turning what could've been just a misunderstood masterpiece into one of the most fascinating, and perhaps inevitable, failures in musical theater history.

Welcome to Season Two of Closing Night, a theater history podcast that dives into the stories of Broadway's famous and forgotten shows that closed too soon. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, an actor and producer based in New York City, and this season I'll be your guide as we uncover the mysteries of productions that never even made it to opening night. Whether they closed out of town or during previews, you'll hear firsthand from those involved, revealing just how unpredictable—and unforgiving—the path to Broadway can be.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Few novels in the 20th century have sparked as much debate—and discomfort—as Lolita. Lauded as a literary masterpiece, banned as obscene, and endlessly dissected in classrooms and courtrooms alike, the book occupies a strange space between genius and moral minefield. But before it became a modern classic, it was just a manuscript written by novelist, literary professor, and noted entomologist Vladimir Nabokov.

Born in 1899 into a wealthy and prominent family in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nabokov published works in the 1920s and 30s, earning some recognition in Russian literary circles. But it wasn’t until his time in the United States that he would write the novel that would define, and in many ways complicate, his legacy.

After moving to New York City in 1940, Nabokov became a volunteer entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History and also began writing novels for the first time in English. He gradually transitioned into academia, and by 1948 he was teaching Russian and European literature at Cornell University. Interesting side note, among his students was future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who would later credit Nabokov with shaping her understanding of language and argument. Well, during his summers, Nabokov would spend time traveling across the western United States with his wife Vera, often catching and studying butterflies. And it was on these summer trips that he began working on a new manuscript.

Nabokov was an ardent believer in individualism and a vocal opponent of ideology—whether totalitarianism, censorship, or what he viewed as Freudian pseudoscience. His writings resisted moral labels and social causes, favoring artistic integrity and the intricacies of language above all else. In a 1958 interview with the CBC, he explained his philosophy on writing:

"I don't wish to touch hearts, and I don't even want to affect minds very much. What I want to produce is really that little sob in the spine of the artistic reader. Well, I leave the field of ideas to Dr. Schweitzer and to Dr. Zhivago. And when you say satire, you imply a purpose, an object, an awakening, apart from and beyond the dream of the book. I have invented an America, my America, and just as fantastic as any inventor's America."

That "invented America" would take its most haunting and controversial shape in 1953 with his third novel written in English, Lolita. The protagonist and narrator within the book is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. Nabokov once said of that name: "The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person.”

The basic gist of the story—told completely from Humbert’s point of view—is that when his original residence in Vermont burns down, he quickly scrambles to find a new place to live. He meets Charlotte Haze, a voluptuous southern widow, who is looking for a lodger in her home. He is reluctant at first to stay with her until he meets her 12-year-old daughter named Dolores Haze, whom he calls Lolita and describes as a "nymphet" (a term now credited to Nabokov). To be closer to Lolita, Humbert decides to marry Charlotte, and eventually begins a tawdry love affair with Lolita after her mother dies. His obsession becomes so overpowering that when Lolita admits to having another lover, Clare Quilty, Humbert ends up tracking him down and killing him.

As you can imagine, the road to publication for a book like this was anything but easy. So what exactly inspired Nabokov? Why did he choose to write Lolita?

"Why did I write it? Why why did I write any of my books after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. See, I have no social purpose, no moral message. I'm not a messenger. I have no general ideas to exploit. I'm not a general, but I like composing riddles. I like finding elegant solutions to my riddles, to those riddles that I have composed myself...As a matter of fact, I don't know little girls very well. When I think about this subject, I don't think I know a single little girl. I mean, I've never met little girls, really. Well, I've met them socially now and then, but Lolita is a figment of my imagination."

GETTING THE BOOK PUBLISHED

Well, imagined or not, the subject matter was risky and unsettling, and so Nabokov initially wanted to publish it under a pseudonym. But US publishers like Viking, Simon & Schuster, and Doubleday didn't want to put their name on it either, and they all flatly rejected his story. So Nabokov looked to Europe. And in Paris, his manuscript found a home at Olympia Press—a small but notorious publisher known both for avant-garde titles as well as outright pornography. Despite warnings from friends and his own misgivings, Nabokov signed a deal to publish the book...using his actual name.

When Lolita appeared in 1955, it had an initial press run of 5,000 copies and was released as two small green paperbacks, riddled with typos and went mostly unnoticed—that was until British author and literary critic Graham Greene named it one of the best books of the year. Well, the backlash to that proclamation was immediate. One London editor called it “the filthiest book I have ever read” and "sheer unrestrained pornography" while others praised its daring style and inventive narrative.

Three years later, when Lolita was finally published in the US, it became an instant bestseller. It became the first novel since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks, and has since gone on to sell more than 60 million copies worldwide. And in the 70 years since its publication, this dichotomy of admiration and controversy surrounding the book continues—with the book being banned in some countries and becoming a staple of literary studies in others. In fact, the book is often cited as a definitive example of how narrative voice can warp a reader’s perception—with what's known as an "unreliable narrator" in Humbert. That's because his credibility is compromised by telling the story from his own singular perspective, and so his one-sided narrative cannot be trusted.

So whether it's because of or in spite of its controversial subject matter, the book has been ranked among the greatest novels of the 20th century by Time, the Modern Library, and The Guardian, and it continues to spark debate wherever it's taught, read, or adapted.

And it has been adapted a lot—into plays, operas, ballets, short stories, even poetry. But the most well-known version came in 1962 when Stanley Kubrick brought Lolita to the screen. With its now-iconic tagline—"How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?"—the film softened many of the book’s more provocative elements, raising the character’s age to 17 and avoiding direct references to Humbert’s past obsessions with young girls. Nabokov himself is credited with writing the screenplay and even earned himself and the film its only Oscar nomination. Though in truth, very little of his work made it into the final film, with much of the script being rewritten by Kubrick and his producer James Harris.

LERNER GETS AN IDEA

And it was after this film came out that Alan Jay Lerner’s assistant put a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita on his desk and said, “This is your next musical.” The idea of adapting a contemporary and controversial novel intrigued Lerner. Erik Haagensen—who has studied Lerner’s work extensively and revised Lolita, My Love for its first-ever New York City production in 2019—offers some insight into what may have drawn Lerner to this particular story:

“Lerner always, always wanted to be relevant. And Lerner was, even though he sort of found his niche with Frederick Lowe, and that niche happened to be writing rather mainstream romantic stories, he was always an innovative and experimental writer…And I think he saw Lolita as the kind of subject matter that he both could, in one way or another, connect with, and that he thought would fill the bill of being a more contemporary show.”

But the 1960s were a time of transition and uncertainty for Lerner, and brought with it many ups and downs. In his personal life, he divorced his fourth wife and married a fifth, and he became a patient of Max Jacobson—known as “Dr. Feelgood”—whose so-called vitamin injections were actually laced with amphetamines. This eventually became an addiction that consumed Lerner for nearly 20 years.

Professionally, he spent much of the decade taking his earlier Broadway hits—My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Paint Your Wagon—and adapting them to the big screen. But after Frederick Loewe suffered a heart attack and officially retired from writing new musicals in 1960, Lerner found himself searching for new creative partners and a fresh direction.

His first collaboration was in 1965 with Burton Lane for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which starred Barbara Harris, and then with André Previn on Coco—a lavish 1969 production starring Katharine Hepburn in her only stage musical. Both shows had modest success, but Lerner was still searching for the creative spark and cultural impact he’d found so easily with Loewe, as he explained in this 1968 interview:

“Fritz can spoil you because he’s a total musician, who has all the musical equipment to write an opera, a symphony, or anything else you should want to…But there’s something mystical about it.”

On more than one occasion, Lerner had tried to convince Burt Bacharach to write with him, but he’d had such terrible experience with Promises, Promises that he didn’t want to compose for theater again. And as I’ve talked about before, it was around this time that producer Joseph Tandet approached Lerner with the idea of a movie musical based on The Little Prince, introducing him to composer John Barry. Lerner wasn’t interested in working with Barry at the time—but the idea of adapting Lolita for the stage never left him.

Over the years, Nabokov had consistently refused offers to adapt his novel—that was until Lerner approached him. He later said, “Lerner is a most talented and excellent classicist. If you have to make a musical version of Lolita, he is the one to do it.” So with permission granted, Lerner began writing the first draft of what was then called My Lolita. And while producer Joseph Tandet thought Lerner was working on The Little Prince movie, Lerner had quietly gone back to John Barry, asking him to write the score for Lolita instead.

THE CREATIVE TEAM GROWS

While Lerner had been 17 years younger than Loewe during their partnership, this time around Lerner was 14 years older than Barry—who now brought a fresh and more contemporary sound to Lerner's more classical lyric writing.

“Barry was a contemporary composer who was having a lot of song hits. It was always very important to Lerner for songs to come out of a show and be song hits. He was not like Sondheim—freed when he didn't have to worry about song hits—he wanted to worry about song hits. And he's very vocal about that in his conversations. And he wanted a composer who could give him that. In this case, I think he also wanted a composer who could give him a 70s sound because he wanted to set it modern day. He did not want to set it in the period in which the book is set because he very much wanted to make comments about American Society in 1970.”

As a result, Lerner's version differs significantly from both Nabokov’s novel as well as Kubrick’s film, not just in format but in focus and intent. While Nabokov’s book traps us inside Humbert’s twisted, poetic mind and the film tries to soften these darker edges to make the story more digestible, the musical reimagines the story as a fractured memory play. Lerner uses songs and dreamlike sequences to explore Humbert’s guilt and obsession, while giving Lolita a bit more visible emotional presence than either of the earlier versions. The result is a story that tries to acknowledge the trauma at its core more directly, even as it remains largely anchored in Humbert’s point of view.

One of the more outlandish moments in Lerner’s writing comes in a song where Humbert finally confronts Quilty: “You odious, unspeakable, Yosemite of sleaziness! / I’ve got you at last. / You hideous, contaminated Switzerland of cheesiness! / I’ve got you at last.” Well, it may not be the best lyrics Lerner ever wrote, but it is a prime example of how the musical teetered between the poetic to the absurd—sometimes within the same song. And the process Lerner and Barry used for writing these songs was similar to the way Lerner had worked with Loewe:

Erik Haagensen: “They would discuss the song and who was singing it and why they were singing it and what it was going to do, and, you know, all of those dramaturgical things first. Then Lerner would come up with a title for a song, then Barry would write the music, and then Lerner would write the lyric…He was very meticulous. He took a long time, and it was terribly difficult to pry a lyric out of his hands because he always thought he could make it better.”

Well, by the summer of 1970, a first draft of the script was ready, and Lerner produced a set of demo recordings to pitch the project. Norman Twain came on board as producer, bringing experience across theater, ballet, and solo performance. The musical’s title briefly changed to Light of My Life: A Musical Play, as revisions continued and the team expanded. Twain brought in choreographer Jack Cole, who had staged the original productions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Man of La Mancha. And Tito Capobianco, artistic director of the New York City Opera, was tapped to direct—marking his Broadway debut. The show also gained a major backer: CBS Records, led at the time by Clive Davis.

CASTING THE SHOW

Though his big Broadway successes were ten years behind him, the name Alan Jay Lerner still commanded respect and reverence. So as word got out that he was hard at work on a new musical, anticipation was certainly building in and around New York. When it came time to find actors to portray these iconic characters, the creative team swung for the fences. Twain and Lerner put out feelers to Peter Sellers (who was best known as the inspector in The Pink Panther and had played Clare Quilty in the Kubrick film version). Peter O’Toole was also approached, who had a strong stage background in Britain and had risen to global fame with his Oscar-nominated turn in Laurence of Arabia. And then there was Richard Burton, the well-known film star who had played King Arthur in Lerner’s Camelot on Broadway.

John Neville as Sherlock Holmes in the 1965 film A Study in Terror — John Neville as Sherlock Holmes in the 1965 film *A Study in Terror*

While Sellers and O'Toole declined to play Humbert, Burton initially accepted the offer. However, he ended up withdrawing and was replaced by friend and fellow Welshman John Neville, who had also done extensive stage work in Britain as well as played Sherlock Holmes in the 1965 film A Study in Terror. Joining Neville was Dorothy Loudon, the yet-to-be Miss Hannigan in the original Annie, who had amazed the creatives in her audition for Charlotte Haze, Lolita’s mother.

Then there was Lolita’s other lover, Clare Quilty. For this role they brought in quite the variety of choices, among them was Leonard Frey, who had been in the original casts of Fiddler on the Roof as well as The Boys in the Band and went on to star in the movie versions of both as well. Frey beat out dozens of others for the role of Quilty — including David Carradine, George Carlin, and Soupy Sales.

Then the 18-year-old daughter of Judy Garland was brought in to audition for the role of Mona Dahl. Although Lorna Luft had performed on a Broadway stage during her mother's sold-out run at the Palace Theatre in 1967, this Lolita musical would essentially be her Broadway debut. Here is how Luft described her experience to the New York Times in a 1972 interview:

"I heard about auditions for Lolita in 1970. When I went, I was told I wasn't right for Lolita. Groovy! I don't look like Lolita anyway, right? But Lolita's got this friend. I might do that. They brought everybody to see me and I got the part. While in California, waiting for rehearsals to start, I got really crazy. They called me every week. Alan Lerner is saying, 'She's gonna open the second act with a terrific song! She gets second billing to Lolita!' I come back to New York and go into rehearsal—I have three lines and no song. No nothin'. A week later, they fired me. They never told me why. The one thing I can say for that horrible thing was that it brought me to New York.”

While Luft would end up being the first to be fired from the production, she most certainly wouldn't be the last.

FINDING LOLITA

Reading a book about a love affair between an older man and young girl is one thing, but seeing it in person is quite another. Stanley Kubrick cast 14-year-old Sue Lyon in his film version, and she ended up winning the Golden Globe for her performance. But that onscreen performance had real life ramifications for the actress, who later stated that the role negatively impacted her life: "My destruction as a person dates from that film. Lolita exposed me to temptations no girl of that age should undergo...I defy any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom at 14 in a sex nymphet role to stay on a level path thereafter." And now with this stage version, the all-male creative team were about to affect the life of another young actress.

Sue Lyon in the 1962 film Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick — Sue Lyon in the 1962 film *Lolita*, directed by Stanley Kubrick

On a chilly afternoon in November 1970, the Billy Rose Theater in Manhattan became the backdrop for a surreal mix of talent search and twisted beauty pageant. The casting team, which included producer Norman Twain and Lerner’s assistants, Grey Kayne and Stone Widney, watched as dozens of girls and young women—between the ages of 10 and 21—lined up for their shot at playing the infamous title role. An Associated Press reporter was on hand to watch the process unfold, and one 13-year-old admitted to him: “I wouldn’t like to be Lolita, but I’d still like to play the part.”

Parents hovered nearby, rationalizing the whole experience. One mother dismissed concerns as she watched her 14-year-old daughter, Verna Harrison, head in to audition: “There’s a wickedness wherever you go. It’s just lucky that my daughter only play-acts it.” Well, Verna made quite the impression when she took off her coat in the audition room to reveal a tight copper blouse. “Fourteen? No kidding,” one of the men said approvingly.

Billy Rose Theater, now named Nederlander

And it only got creepier from there. Widney, using what one reporter described as a “pleasant, guidance counselor voice,” said to 15-year-old auditioner Teresa Conforti: “I don’t think you’re right for Lolita, but we might have something else for you. And don’t wear makeup next time.” Unfazed, Theresa said, “I wanted to look sexy.” To which Widney replied, “You look sexy anyway.”

And that, apparently, was the problem. For the men doing the casting, the girls were always too something—too sexy, too plain, too tall, too small, too flat, too curvy. As Twain would explain it, they needed a girl who makes a man forget the moral conventions of society. Because, according to him, if Lolita is 5-foot-5 with a great figure it would be perfectly normal for Humbert to go after her. So they needed to “rule out anything that looks normal.”

In Los Angeles, the search finally ended with 16-year-old Annette Ferra, who auditioned in front of Twain, Lerner, Barry, and Capobianco—bringing with her a bikini photo and boldly declaring: “This is what Lolita looks like.” Ferra certainly wasn’t new to the spotlight. The daughter of nightclub owner Tony Ferra, she had been singing onstage since the age of three and had already built a music career, opening for famed rock group Buffalo Springfield when she was 12 and landing a pop single in the Cashbox Top 100 at the age of 15. She also co-starred on The Brady Bunch just a month before her audition.

Though she admitted to never having read the novel or seen the film, Ferra bore a strong resemblance to Sue Lyon, and one reporter described her as “a round faced blonde with enormous black eyes and a figure well rounded in all the right places.” It’s a description that reflects the uncomfortable lens through which she, a teenager, was being evaluated.

Yet in an interview with the Associated Press, Ferra shared her surprisingly composed—and naïve—thoughts on the show’s central relationship: “There’s nothing dirty about what Humbert does...It’s not a crime. In the end, Humbert is cured. It’s just a love story.” Her interpretation wasn’t that far off from Lerner’s own view that he shared with the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I think the story is much more pertinent now than when the film was made. Humbert is such a tragic, flawed, misplaced romantic, lost in post-World War II.”

REHEARSALS BEGIN

It was announced that Lolita, My Love would open on Broadway March 30, 1971, with an out-of-town tryout set for Philadelphia in February. So rehearsals began a couple months before that. However, choreographer Jack Cole never showed up, so Danny Daniels was brought in to replace him. Daniels had performed in the original Kiss Me, Kate and staged musical numbers for the 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun. But when he began working on dance sequences, one of the principal dancers, Dan Siretta—who had also performed in Lerner’s previous musical Coco—chose to sit it out.

And as was mentioned earlier, Lorna Luft was fired a week into rehearsals without explanation. She was replaced by another child actor, Jill Streisant, whose only Broadway credit had been the short-lived Georgy, which lasted just four performances. But casting wasn’t the only issue during rehearsals. The cast also had to deal with near-constant changes to the script.

Erik Haagensen: “There were constant rewrites all over the place…There are dizzying arrays of pages. Larry Guittard, Lawrence Guittard, who was the understudy for both Humbert and Quilty, has talked about…how awful it was to try to keep up with all the rewrites because they just come at you like a snowstorm. And it's true, Lerner would change one line and make them send out a new page. He didn't wait and sort of consolidate so that the actors could perhaps assimilate it a little easier. They just flew out.”

But it wasn’t just the script. Staging and direction were in flux too, especially for Annette Ferra. She’d never even dated before in real life and now had to play intimate scenes with a man in his 40s. Understandably, she had her own struggles during rehearsals. Now known as Chris Gilmore and a veteran casting director, she spoke about her time in the show on The Lolita Podcast in December 2020.

“There was one scene, it was the most risqué scene we had, where I had a little blue nightgown. It was short, but it looked like a dress. And, you know, thank god. It wasn't, like, see through or anything. But it looked like a little blue baby doll dress. It was really cute. And so, I'm supposed to be in a motel room with Humbert Humbert. I take my hand and believe me, they rehearsed this thing so many times because it was so important to them, how my hand raised from the bed to, like, get my finger and call him in. And that and then the lights go out.”

After taking three days to stage the scene, the creative team decided to change a particular element of it. Snaps were added to the nightgown. When Ferra asked why, Lerner told her:

“Well, the snaps are in the top because you're gonna drop your nightgown. You're gonna rip it off and drop it in that scene rather than—I said, but, yeah, but we rehearsed for three days. How to lift my finger up to call him to the bed. You wanted it sensual. You wanted it a certain way. And now all of a sudden I’m not gonna lift my finger, you know…and yet, they wanted me to be a stripper too.”

Naturally, Ferra was upset and called her agent in California, who flew to New York to speak with the show’s team directly.

“He said, this isn't in your contract. They can't do this to you. And you're a minor. And he had to talk with them and they said, but we have to add this. Hair has big box office sales. We want this. And she won't be naked. She'll have a see-through body stocking on. Well, I don't know what the difference is really. I mean, if I know and I could see your breasts and I could see your cha cha and everything else, then you're naked. You know? It doesn't matter if you're in a see-through body stocking or not. And so I refused. And then I'll never forget the producer's last words. He said, ‘Well, you're too virtuous.’”

And this wouldn’t be the only time that producer Norman Twain would make troubling statements.

THE PHILADELPHIA RUN

When the show began its five-week pre-Broadway tryout in Philadelphia, even some of the cast were unsure what kind of story they were telling—including John Neville. As he saw it, there was no one for the audience to root for. No one to care about, “except for maybe the child—the victimization of this little girl.” But beyond the characters, the show itself still needed work. Lerner was actively rewriting during rehearsals, a process that clearly took a toll. His wife would sit beside him and hand him special white cotton gloves to stop him from biting his nails. But Lerner would peel them off, toss them to the ground, and chew his fingers anyway—at which point an assistant would silently offer up another pair.

Meanwhile, producer Norman Twain was out promoting the show with relentless optimism, calling it “the best thing Lerner has ever done,” even above My Fair Lady. He declared that Lerner and John Barry would be “the team of the ’70s,” destined to rival the likes of Lerner and Loewe or Rodgers and Hammerstein. And as for concerns about the subject matter, he downplayed them completely, insisting the show had “no controversy, no nudity, no four-letter words.” But in an interview with the Camden Courier-Post, things got strange and rather disturbing as Twain described the central message of Lolita, My Love:

“The moral is that total obsession with anything destroys a person … whether the obsession is a little girl or a philosophy... [Could I be] involved with a nymphet? Yeah, I could be, absolutely! There are certain types of girls — little girls — nymphets, that, all else being equal, would turn me on if you met them in a motel by chance … But I haven’t fallen yet. I’ve been playing it pretty straight. My wife prefers it that way.”

As uneasy as you probably were just listening to that and me in having to read it, that is exactly what audiences and critics felt when the musical opened on February 15, 1971 at the Shubert Theater in Philadelphia. Some people even walked out of the show. And the reviews? Well, they weren’t exactly kind about this new musical adaptation. Here’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer had to say:

“What’s happened to Humbert Humbert and his perverse darling Lolita? They look so pale and played out now. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of life left in them. A kind of pernicious anemia has overtaken them.… In its present form, which will doubtlessly be drastically altered before it leaves town, the show is only a ghost of Nabokov’s comic masterpiece… for a while, it looks as if Lolita, My Love is going to be one of those rare musicals which makes a virtue of literate without losing theatrical pizzazz. The impression lasts as long as Dorothy Loudon is around.”

That’s Louden in a live recording of her big number “Sur Le Quais de Ramsdale, Vermont” at the end of Act I. She received particular praise for her performance as did most of the actors, and critics said the music was eerie and haunting with “elements of brilliance.” But they also pointed out that the choreography needed better integration into a show, which had a first act that was way too long. And that once the second act came along and the show shifted all focus to Humbert and Lolita, the story just fell apart, drifting too far away from the source material, and just simply became either too boring or too uncomfortable to watch. The Evening Bulletin summed it up very bluntly and succinctly in its review: “The kindest thing that can be said about the new musical is that it is a disaster.”

CHANGES BEING MADE

Well, just three days after the opening, Twain, with a bit of humility, said that the reviews were “completely accurate” and that in 16 shows, they only had about three receptive audiences. And so he announced that the show would postpone its Broadway opening at the Mark Hettinger Theater from March 30th to April 13th. Also, due to low ticket sales, he decided to cancel the final three weeks of their run in Philadelphia, so that they could bring the show back to New York for 10 days of rewrites and new rehearsals. It would then reopen in Boston on March 15th for a three-week run.

But the dates and venues weren’t the only things changing in the show. The New York Times said that Tito Capobianco resigned as the director as a result of creative differences with the show's authors. In an interview years later, Capobianco would have this to say: “In opera, you have a solid basic structure of words and music. In this, they were constantly changing the music, lyrics and dialogue. At each rehearsal they would show up with new ideas and new text. Every day, things were changed.”

Other sources I found say that Capobianco was fired, but either way he was replaced with British director Noel Willman. Now, unlike Capobianco, Willman did have a Broadway resumé that included a Best Director Tony nomination for The Lion in Winter and a Tony Award for A Man for All Seasons. And if you’re changing the director, might as well do the same with the choreographer as Danny Daniels was fired and replaced with Dan Siretta, one of the dancers in the show I mentioned previously.

The biggest change came when Annette Ferra was let go, making room for a new Lolita. One gossip column claimed the issue was that Ferra looked “24 when she was supposed to be 16.” And so the hunt began again—with one audition even including a young Sissy Spacek—but the role ultimately went to Denise Nickerson. Two years younger than Ferra, Nickerson had starred on the soap Dark Shadows and had just wrapped filming on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, playing the gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde. And yet, the show’s promotional poster—featuring Ferra licking her fingers—remained unchanged, even as Nickerson stepped into the title role.

Before rehearsals began, producer Norman Twain promised a whole new take on the show—something he said had never really had a chance to develop during the Philadelphia run. That meant writing new scenes and songs, cutting others entirely, and shaving 28 minutes off what had been a sprawling three-hour musical.

Erik Haagensen: “Lolita was one of the first Broadway musicals to use electronic music. And Barry used the Moog synthesizer, which was very new at the time…In Philly, it had a much more experimental sound musically…And much of that got cut between Philadelphia and Boston. It had a much more traditional sound in Boston.”

There were long, intense creative meetings with Lerner, Siretta, Barry, Barry’s wife, and even Truman Capote, who had been a longtime friend of Lerner’s. Everyone had an opinion, especially when it came to restaging the now-infamous bedroom scene between Humbert and Lolita. Barry wanted to cut it completely, but Lerner and Capote insisted it had to stay. Their solution? Move away from realism and make it stylized, expressionistic—anything to keep audiences engaged without crossing the line. Lerner even gave Humbert a new song to serenade Lolita with.

At this point, the production had already burned through more than $650,000, with Boston adding another quarter million to the tab. But Lerner and Twain were determined to prove this could work and be a viable musical. And when Lolita 2.0 opened in Boston at the Shubert Theatre on March 15th, this time the audiences were a little more receptive. Loudon still brought down the house with her act-one showstopper “Sur Le Quais,” Neville and Frey earned consistent praise, and Nickerson brought a new energy to the role. For a moment, it seemed like things might finally be turning around.

Dorothy Loudon and John Neville dance on stage

But then came the reviews. The Associated Press noted “some good music and some fine wit,” but said it was “done in by the plot.” The Boston Globe called it “a case of better never than late.” Others still couldn’t pin down the tone—is this a farce? A satire? A melodrama? Or just a dirty old musical? But it was the Harvard Crimson that went for the jugular: “It needs style and taste and depth, and these are things which Alan Jay Lerner’s idea of theater evidently can no longer offer.” So after just nine performances, the show closed. Which probably brought relief to most of the cast.

Erik Haagensen: “I've never talked to an actor who was in Lolita, My Love who had anything positive to say about the experience. I talked to Dorothy Loudon, I talked to John Neville. They were both very diplomatic about the fact that it was not a great experience. But, you know, neither one of them waxed rhapsodic about how wonderful it was. The closest came was Loudon, she said, ‘This material was absolutely first rate. It was rock solid.’ But, you know, she was—her character was—the show wasn’t… I’ve been told by other people who worked on it that she had her moments of frustration and unhappiness out of town as well. It was just a very troubled production.”

By the time the musical closed in Boston, it was nearly $900,000 in the hole—that’s over $7 million in today’s dollars. Lerner, however, still wasn’t finished. He put all the costumes and sets in storage, and between April and June of 1971, he rewrote the entire script—twice—and once again renamed the show Light of My Life. He then flew to London to pitch his new version to Rex Harrison and Hayley Mills, knowing that star power could finally bring his controversial story to Broadway. Lerner also sent Barry his new script that now refocused the musical by having Humbert share his story in a psychiatrist office, instead of directly to the audience.

Erik Haagensen: “And that was when Barry quit after receiving that script. And there's a letter from Lerner to Barry, you know, ‘Friday you said that, you know, you thought the script was wonderful, and now you're quitting. And I don't understand. What changed between Friday and Monday.’ And that's when he says, ‘I've just decided the idea is not practicable.’ But I think he took one look at that script and went, ‘I don't want to write seven more songs.’”

By the summer of 1971, the collaboration had ended and the musical was officially dead. But the final nail in the coffin came from the man who started it all—Vladimir Nabokov. While he had once shown cautious support for Lerner’s efforts, his tone had clearly shifted by the time he spoke with The New York Times that October. He hadn’t seen a single performance, but that didn’t stop him from weighing in—especially on the casting. “Both girls—the one they fired and the one who replaced her—were awful; little bosomy girls, the wrong type altogether.” And when he was asked more broadly about adaptations, he said: “If they’re going to do it someday, they’re going to do it. So I had better be around when they do it—not only to criticize the thing, but also to explain that I have nothing to do with it.”

Donald Sutherland and Blanche Baker in Albee's Lolita — Donald Sutherland and Blanche Baker in Albee's *Lolita*

A decade later, another award-winning playwright, Edward Albee, took a stab at the story—this time as a straight play with no music. And while his version did actually reach Broadway, it lasted only 12 performances and faced the same backlash and audience discomfort that had plagued Lerner’s attempt.

In the end, the problem with Lolita, My Love wasn’t casting. It wasn’t the book or the score, the choreography or the costumes. The problem was the story itself. As theater historian Ken Mandelbaum put it in Not Since Carrie, no one—not even Alan Jay Lerner—could turn Lolita into a successful musical. Because despite all the rewrites and reinventions, Lolita, My Love collapsed under the weight of its own subject. Showing that some stories, it seems, just aren’t meant for the stage.

Closing Night theater history podcast cover art

Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media, with me, Patrick Oliver Jones, as writer and executive producer. Dan Delgado is editor and co-producer not only for this podcast but also for his own movie podcast called The Industry. Much appreciation goes to Erik Haagensen for sharing his expertise on Alan Jay Lerner and Lolita, My Love, and to the voice talents of Sophie Atkin and our very own Dan Delgado. Join us next time for my conversation with director Emily Maltby on how she helped revive and revise Lolita, My Love to finally make its New York City debut in 2019. All that and more on the next episode of Closing Night.

Patrick (interview):

“I think that's what I found the most interesting. It's like it's not like Barry and Lerner wanted to create these kind of weird, awkward songs because it's about a weird, awkward subject. No. They they used beautiful melodies and and lyrics.”

Emily Maltby (interview):“Again, this opening number, I heard it. I was, oh my god. It's a beautiful song. Wow. Like, my heart is breaking for this character because it's successfully doing its job. Is then I was like, wait. What? And and I think that reaction was what spurred my entire interpretation because I was like, okay. If they're gonna have written the musical comedy of Lolita, then, like, I have to remove one step and be like, why? And and then the the why is because that this character fancies himself the lead of a great romantic musical. But, yeah, it's really interesting. They they don't as writers really lean into the, distortion of it. It's just sort of presented for you totally. In the creation of Doctor Ray though, they they start to put that distance in from the beginning. And so that was something they, again, that came after Boston where I where I, you know, I have to think that that, that's what gives me the clue. Like, okay. That's sort of the intention here. This musical, genre is intended to be sort of, interrogated a little bit because there's this distance that's being put in.”

Sources and materials used to create this episode...