Patrick Oliver Jones:

For decades, Lolita, My Love has remained one of Broadway's great cautionary tales, a troubled musical remembered more for its chaos than its content. As we discussed in the last episode, with its disastrous out of town tryouts, a revolving door of cast and creatives, and its abrupt closure in Boston, the show never even made it to New York. That is a until 2019. That's when the York Theater Company revived the musical as part of its Musicals in Mufti series, an annual event known for presenting concert style readings of rarely seen or misunderstood works. No costumes, no sets, just actors with scripts in hand, offering a fresh take on forgotten gems. This bare bones revival was more than just a reading. It was a reconstruction. Alan Jay Lerner historian Eric Hogginson pieced together the script from six different drafts, creating what may be the most complete and truest version of the musical ever seen. And at the helm of this unique staging was director Emily Maltby, who brought a thoughtful perspective to a show that still sparks debate. In this bonus episode, Emily shares how she and her team approached such difficult material with care and sensitivity, balancing learners intent with a modern audience's expectations. We talk about how casting, musical tone, and even the structure of the story were reimagined to bring clarity to a show long clouded by confusion and controversy. It's a behind the scenes look at this 2019 revival and a candid reflection on the larger challenge of reviving complicated shows with empathy and intent.

INTRO: Welcome to season two of Closing Night, a theater history podcast that dives into the stories of Broadway's famous and forgotten shows that close 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 made it to Opening night, revealing just how unpredictable and unforgiving the path to Broadway can be.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

We'll just get started here. So it was originally based on the book Lolita and then there was a movie, Stanley Kubrick, and then this musical came out after that. And from what I understand, you had to kind of go searching for the script for the, the lyrics, the music. Was it all in one piece or did you have to compile from different sources?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, when I joined the project, it had sort of been been compiled, but Eric Hagenson, who is a sort of learner historian, had done a ton of research on this show and had sort of found a couple of drafts that had been written. So it had gone to Philadelphia and it had gone to Boston, but obviously had never come into New York. And then had found, after Boston, there had been a few more drafts that had been done, which obviously never got to be performed. And so he had sort of composited based on those drafts and the Philadelphia script and the Boston script, and what he knew of Lerner's intentions and sort of composited what he believed to be sort of the most definitive version. And so that's what I received. And we pretty much did it exactly as Eric had put it together. I think we ended up making a couple cuts for Time just because it was pretty long, because we had sort of pulled from all these different drafts. But.

Emily Maltby:

But yeah, there was certainly a theatrical archaeological dig that happened that Eric did before I had even seen the script.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And do you know how it kind of changed, or did Eric talk about how it had changed from those original out of town productions to the final version that you guys did?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest thing was that Dr. Ray, which was this sort of framing device in the script that I had received, wasn't originally in it or wasn't originally in it to the extent that it was. I'm actually not sure, since I never actually looked back at the previous drafts. But the way that the script that I had received was that it was sort of framed with Humbert talking to this sort of disembodied voice psychiatrist person who was sort of, like, asking him questions and guiding him along the story. So there was this frame of the story being told, and in our production, the person was on stage, and we sort of made more of a meal out of that character. But that was, I think, the biggest shift that had been done after Boston. And so it had never actually been performed with that frame.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

I gotcha. So originally it was more of a voiceover kind of thing, or just it was just him, Humbert talking to himself, but to this doctor. Is that how it was framed?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah. Well, the way that it was written, the way that the Dr. Ray character was written, was that it was a voice. Like it was someone. It was like, you know, Zach and Chorus Line or something. Like it was a voice that you could hear that spoke to him. And he sort of talked out, but we never saw the person. And we were supposed to believe that he was, like, talking to a therapist or something.

Emily Maltby:

And so we kind of ran with that concept a little bit more. But I don't know that Dr. Ray, what existed in that format in either of the two out of town productions? I don't think he did.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And so it seems like that in later drafts, it started to become more of A physical person. And that's what you went with in your production?

Emily Maltby:

Yes. And that it was more of, like a framing device for the whole piece was like, this is a story being told to a person at the end, like from the end of the story. And then he would sort of go back through the scenes, which was really helpful for me because I had to make this character an unreliable narrator. Like, he's sort of literature's great unreliable narrator. And it's really hard. It's harder to do that when it's written sort of like a musical. So this framing device gave me a lot of opportunity to kind of make you go, well, is that really what happened? And that's, I think, really important to the story.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Gotcha. Yeah. Did you see a beautiful noise? No, because it's framed. Someone like that, like Neil diamond, is talking to a therapist at the beginning. And then through that, then the story kind of unravels as far as his history. Yeah.

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, it's helpful. It was really helpful for us because so much of what he says is not true or is what he imagines or he's sort of projecting onto her. And that needed to be clearer. You couldn't take him at face value because what he's saying is so pont. So it was helpful and I think helped make the piece work. And so I think that was some work that Lerner had done later. And so he had sort of started that investigation before.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. One of the things that I read was that if Lolita had to be a musical, Lerner was the one to do it. And this was something that Namikov had said. Do you think Lerner succeeded in adapting a rather touchy subject like Lolita?

Emily Maltby:

I think the novel is so fascinating as sort of a portrait of a psyche in conflict. You're sort of in the mind of this really sort of troubled person. And it's a distorted mind. You sort of spend time in this distorted mind and how he sees the world and how he justifies this behavior. And it's such an interesting novel, I think, you know, because you can be first person in a book and you can't be as aggressively first person in a play. It's a lot more challenging. For example, like, Lolita doesn't really have to exist in the book. She's sort of his conjuring, and he projects onto her everything that he imagines and desires.

Emily Maltby:

And she only exists inside his mind and inside his memory and inside his experiences. But she has no external life beyond that. Or at least not to us, the reader. When you have an actual, actual human being on stage playing the part. All of a sudden, she's a fully blooded character and you have to believe her. But you're also still only getting his side of events, and it's still only getting his version of. You don't really ever still get to see her beyond that. And so that was something.

Emily Maltby:

That's a challenge on stage. I think that's something that a novel can do more easily. And so that was something that, like the unreliability of the narrator and this framing device really helped for me because I could say, okay, well, she is as much a victim of his actions as his storytelling. And I couldn't give her more lines, I couldn't give her more scenes. I couldn't give her a life beyond what we saw. But I could let the audience know that we weren't seeing the full picture and I could watch him take away her or sort of rewrite her. So I can't judge whether or not it was successful, but I think there are some really interesting things that he was playing with there. And it was fun to kind of.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Explore it as far as, like, you know, because the movie itself was controversial when it came out. You know, obviously, I mean, it's a tantalizing, scandalous kind of subject to write about. So do you think that it needed or deserved a stage adaptation?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, I mean, I think the story has become more than it is. I think, you know, the phrase the word Lolita has. Has taken on a meaning of its own. And it's come to mean like a promiscuous girl. I mean, Lolita is the story of child sexual abuse. That's what it is. And it' rarely talked about in that way. I mean, I think now it is, but, you know, it's talked about sort of.

Emily Maltby:

It's like, ooh, you know, she's. She's this vixen, this young, sort of like, tempting temptress that's seductive and scandalous and all these things. And it's a bit. It's a story of abuse. I mean, it is 100% a story of abuse. So, you know, I think that's a really delicate thing to try and dramatize again in a novel. Because you're spending so much time in his mind, you can sort of. It's more about that than it is about the action.

Emily Maltby:

And it's certainly less about her. I think anytime you dramatize that story, she becomes, you know, as I said, she becomes a full character. And so I think musical theater is like the most perfect, like, is such a powerful art form for these incredibly, incredibly complex stories. I think the nuances and the complexity of him and the way he kind of thinks of himself as this sort of tragic hero and this romantic hero in this. In this torrid love affair. And that sort of takes to the musical theater really well. It was interesting. Like, I went into.

Emily Maltby:

When I read the script, I had never read the book. I knew the broad strokes and I knew what, like, the phrase had come to mean colloquially, but I really didn't know much about it. And when I read the script, the opening number, Lolita, the song Lolita is this. I mean, John Barry wrote this unbelievable melody. It's this very haunting, beautiful love song. And if you just take it at face value and you don't know who Lolita is, who this guy is, it's like this beautiful song of lost love and I must find you and, you know, get you back and. And then you pause and you're like, wait, what is he like? And then if you think about what he's actually singing about, you know, so the musical does this. This thing that I think is really interesting, which is.

Emily Maltby:

It kind of uses. Or at least my interpretation of it was that it uses what we know about the art form of musical theater and what we know about the art form of particularly romance and musical theater. And it uses those things to try and, you know, to. They're tools for Humbert to use to try and paint this picture of what happened and what is. You know. And the musical is sort of aiding him in that way. It's giving him the center stage. You know, it's giving him.

Emily Maltby:

Giving him the beautiful love song center stage with the dramatic lighting, and it's giving him the sacred spot that you give to romantic leads in great musicals. It's only when you take it in context that you realize it's being used insidiously. It's being used to kind of paint this picture of what happened that for him is somehow palatable.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So it's interesting, in using the musical device, then, not only is Humbert able to tell the story and try to get the audience, I guess, in some way, on his side. Understand, what I'm going through. This is my point of view, but the songs, the music is another way to kind of lure the audience in, to believe him, to feel for him.

Emily Maltby:

Yeah. At least that was. That was how I read it, and that was how I interpreted it. And it played with all kinds of musical tropes. Like, it kind of had all of these you know, there was like the patter song and then the comedy song and, you know, there were like all these very sort of classic musical theater isms. And if you take them at face value, they're sort of doing the work of the musical comedy, but he's using them to tell a story of, you know, abuse and violence. And so those two things were extremely at odds for me when I read it. And I thought, oh, that's, you know, at first you're just sort of like, oh my God, this is horrible and horrifying.

Emily Maltby:

But then you cut. But for me, there was something interesting about that, like kind of cognitive dissonance. It was sort of 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 also thought it was important that he not succeed in that by the end of the show and that, you know, his illusion sort of falls apart. But I thought what a cool way to sort of also interrogate the art form. And in that way I think it, you know, a musical of Lolita, sort of an interesting exercise.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Does he believe himself to be doing something horrible or does he see the kind of idealistic rose colored glasses version of what he's doing?

Emily Maltby:

No, he definitely doesn't see himself as doing something horrible. I mean, he loves her or claims, thinks he loves her and thinks also that she loves him, which is perhaps the more insidious part of it. And he also is like, you know, wildly manipulative, but. But no, no, he doesn't say, you know, I'm going to take this child and abuse her and hurt her. And I, you know, it's some sort of twisted obsession and love affair for him.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So very interesting. As far as the versions that you, that you saw, were you able to see some of the ones that Eric gathered and so of them. Did you see the musical evolving, changing, getting better, changing its point of view, that kind of thing. How did you see it changing?

Emily Maltby:

I didn't. I kind of purposefully didn't go back and look at all of the other versions. I sort of took what I was being given at face value because I was able to come to it fresh as someone who I've now since read the book and as part of that process, read the book, but at the point of my interacting with the script, I hadn't. And I was also being given this very complex challenge, which was they were, you know, we were going to do a five day staged reading of this piece that deals with this incredibly sensitive subject matter that was written in the 70s, before we had even, like, clinically more of the deeper understanding of child sexual abuse. So there's. There's so much about the world and the way we talk about it and. And, you know, there's just so much about the world that had changed since the piece had been written and certainly since the novel had been written. And I was more interested in seeing what I brought to it as a.

Emily Maltby:

I think I was 27 at the time, 27 year old woman. Rather than, like, this is a learner piece. Like, what can I learn about, like, musical theater and the history of this piece? And, like, I kind of. I kind of wanted to come at it from the perspective of, like, me, my life and the world that I lived in, engaging with this piece. And Eric was the great learner historian, so he had access to all of that.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And so with the final script that you got, nothing was added to it. They're all the music and lyrics and book of Lerner and Barry. Right. There was nothing that Eric added or.

Emily Maltby:

Anything he might have added, like connective tissue or like, you know, a line here, a line there to kind of like bridge the gap from a scene to a song and possibly put some things in places that he didn't know were. Ultimately. They would have ended up. But no, it's. All the material is there. There's just maybe a little bit of organization and stitching.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Just like stitching it together. But as far as, like, the pieces, they were all just Lerner Berry. So you didn't really have to create a musical.

Emily Maltby:

No, no, no, no. And we ended up cutting some stuff. Stuff for time. I think we cut one song, that.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Which makes sense. Yes.

Emily Maltby:

That had never been performed. That was added for this version. Like, it was written after. And then we ended up cutting it because it didn't work and also was very long.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Interesting. Yeah. What was it that made you want to revive this? You know, you were approached with it, but what made you eventually say, yes?

Emily Maltby:

It's a great question. Because my first response was no. Are you kidding me? Like, absolutely not. And then I sort of thought, okay, they're gonna do this. They're gonna do this reading. I think I could handle this material well. I'm interested in handling this material well and interested in this character of Dolores and what I could do for her. I understand the limitations of the story and the way it's told.

Emily Maltby:

And that's true in the novel. That's, you know. But I also understand the limitations and can kind of subvert them and can sort of play with them. And I cared so much about this character. I cared so much about the story. I cared so much about the way the story has historically been told. I cared so much about what I went in knowing, which was, this is a story about a guy who has a relationship. Relationship who has an obsession.

Emily Maltby:

And abusive. And abusive as a child. And I knew that Lolita, the phrase had gone on to mean a promiscuous child. And I thought, okay, how do we get from this is a story of child sexual abuse to the word Lolita, meaning a promiscuous young woman? That's so interesting that as, like, a culture, that's what we've taken away from this story, is that she's, you know, this little Lolita, and he's. I don't know, something else. And I thought, there's so much in this story. And I was intrigued by the challenge. Within the confines of what's on the page, within the confines of the way that the story is written, is there any room to provide any space for her? And is there any room to at least help you understand that she's a person who's, as I said, not only a victim of his actions, but a victim of his storytelling? And with that, I thought, okay, this is something I can.

Emily Maltby:

This is a very clear challenge, and this is something I'm interested in trying to do. And so it became this sort of, like, rescue mission of, like, how much of Lolita can I salvage?

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, I think it's. It's interesting the way you said it. It's like, okay, the show's going to get done. If not me, if I'm not going to do it, who else is going to do it? And why should I let them do it? You know, so I'm sure things like that.

Emily Maltby:

Well, and as soon as. As a director, you have that thought of, like, wait, wait, someone else could do it, and I might not like the way they do that. That means the hook. That means you've got the hook. Like, that means something about you care. Like, something about you cares. And it's not. Just let it happen.

Emily Maltby:

Who cares? Like, all of a sudden, I knew I cared because I was, like, interested in. In the idea of someone else doing it and what would happen. And so then, yeah, as soon as I recognized that, I was like, all right, I have to do it.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

We'll be back with more from Emily Maltby after the break. We touched on it earlier before, but I want to Kind of dig into it as far as bringing Lolita off the page, off of a screen, and now into, like a real person on a stage. What are the challenges of putting her on stage because she's underage? There's this love affair, staging their relationship together. Yeah, what are the challenges there?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, I mean, the challenges are enormous. The first thing that I did was I cast one who was 25. So, you know, again, I only had five days of rehearsals, so it didn't even cross my mind to actually hire someone who is underage because that would have required to do that ethically. That would have required, you know, to have basically a psychologist in the room, her mother in the room, like numerous, numerous conversations about, you know, what we were doing, how we were going to do an intimacy coordinate. I mean, it just. It would have required a level of infrastructure that in order for me to feel comfortable doing it. So. So we worked.

Emily Maltby:

I worked with this incredible actress, Caitlin Cohn, who's. Who I think was 25 at the time, or roughly around that age, but believably played young. And like I said, I think the biggest challenge with putting her on stage was she's not given the life of the full blooded life of a character in the script because we never see her, not through his eyes. So it was about piecing together what is being said, what we think is really happening, and how to sort of show the distinction, disparity between those two things. And the way we did it was, you know, we kind of went through the script and looked at the moments that Humbert was sort of using as his. As his, like, evidence. See, she wanted me to. Yes.

Emily Maltby:

See, she. She asking for it. She loved me. She. All these things. And those were the moments that I. I sort of couldn't let go by uncontested. I couldn't let that just sit.

Emily Maltby:

And so we put the Doctor on stage and she was played by a woman and named Thursday Farrar, who sat on stage the whole time. And so there was already just like a barrier between the audience and the story. There was this person who was watching and sort of questioning what was really true. And then there were these moments that we found where Lolita or Dolores kind of behaved, proving his quote unquote version of events. And during those moments, we replayed this Lolita theme that played at the opening. It's like very kind of ominous theme. And the lights changed and went to the sort of insidious green and she kind of went into what felt sort of like a trance. And he, like, fed her, the lines.

Emily Maltby:

I couldn't give her more lines and I couldn't have her say what she was thinking. But I could watch. I could show you that he was taking her voice from her and that he was writing this version of events. And so you don't know what actually happened. You'll never know what actually happened. You'll never know what she thought about it. But we will know that what we're seeing is a one sided version of events. And that was really important to me.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And it's all about the subtext. It's like someone can say I love you, but there's so many different ways of saying that to where and reasons why. You can put like a quick, I mean, right, and you can put a question mark at the end or you can be sarcastic or it can be like, I'm being told to say this. I know. You know, there's so it seems like it's all about what line she did have and using them in a way to cast doubt on what's being said.

Emily Maltby:

Exactly, exactly. And he also manipulated her life such that by the time her mother had died, she literally had no one else. Like, you know, she was a lonely girl who, she felt her mother had neglected her because her mother needed to remarry. And so her mother was busy trying to find a husband and sort of left her alone. So she felt lonely, she felt neglected. This guy walks into her life, starts talking to her, starts asking her questions, makes her feel heard, makes her feel scene. This is all part of the grooming process. The mother dies, he's now her stepfather and she has no other options.

Emily Maltby:

Like he's the only person for, you know, so it was all set up so that this child would have no one else to go to except for this person. And if he left, she'd have no one. So she better give him what he wants. So when she says I love you, when she says I want it, when she says yes, she's not able to consent. She's underage, she doesn't know what she's consenting to. She's trying to save her life. And so there's, yeah, there's an interpretation of events that we can at least seed in so that we're not taking what's being said at face value or at least not buying the interpretation of events that he's feeding us.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And as far as the music, the lyrics itself, what are your overall impressions of it as a musical?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, I mean, the music is really, really, really beautiful. You know, John Barry has this unbelievable Ability to write these sort of gothic y. Romantic. I mean, he wrote the James Bond theme like, you know, he's so. Some of the music, you're just like, it's really, really stunning. And. And the lyrics, you know, again, they really sit in this, like, comfortable musical comedy space. And I think, you know, Lolita's often referred to as a comedy, like the novel is often referred to as a comedy.

Emily Maltby:

And it's quite funny. It is quite funny because, you know, partially because this guy is so convinced of his own narrative that it's, you know, it's quite funny and it's. And it's dark and twisted and all these things. So, you know, the songwriting and the playwriting really sits comfortably in this musical comedy space. I think the challenge just became making you say, like, well, is it really a musical comedy or are we just being shown what looks to be a musical comedy for a very specific reason? Which was a fun directorial challenge.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, it was interesting. I listened to. I think it was one of the recordings from either Philadelphia or Boston. But that's really the only cast recording, so to speak, that we have. But yeah, it's interesting. These songs, completely out of context of what you think the story is, are just beautiful songs.

Emily Maltby:

Totally.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

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

Emily Maltby:

Totally. And that was what took me the first time again, this opening number. I heard it and I was, God, it's a beautiful song. Wow. Like, my heart is breaking for this character successfully doing its job. That 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 going to have written the musical comedy of Lolita, then, like, I have to remove one. One step and be like, why? And then the why is because that this character fancies himself the lead of a great romantic musical.

Emily Maltby:

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.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. I know. For myself, whenever I played the bad guy, I always look for, like, number one. I always approach. When I do a bad guy, I approach it in a way that, well, I don't think I'm the bad guy. And so I. I think I'm either the hero of the piece or I'm doing what's. What's good.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So I always approach it that. And I always try to layer in there's enjoyment and what other people say bad. But it's what I do. This is what I enjoy, you know, and so Humbert is kind of that way in the fact that he's enjoying what he's doing. He sees nothing wrong with it. And so what were those conversations like in dealing with him and bringing him to stage?

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean, you can't play someone who wants to be a bad guy. No one wants to be a bad guy. No one. No one. I mean, it's a really uninteresting character who's like, I want to be a villain. Those don't exist except in, like, Scooby Doo cartoons or something. So, I mean, again, he fancy.

Emily Maltby:

He thinks he's the center of a tragic love story. He thinks he's the romantic hero. And, you know, by the end of the show, that illusion shatters. You know, I don't think he gets redemption in any way, but he does get awareness, or even the beginnings of awareness, which is a punishment in and of itself. And that. That's sort of where we end with him. And I think that's sort of the best we can. We can't redeem this character on stage, but we can let him understand a bit more of what he's done.

Emily Maltby:

What was fun was that we had this Dr. Ray character who, you know, as I said, was supposed to be a disembodied voice, was also supposed to be male. We cast this woman, Thursday Farrar, and we put her on stage with him. So you couldn't fully see past the illusion. Even at the beginning, when it was, you know, fully presented this illusion to you without any holes had been poked, yet you always got the sense that it was a performance. You always got the sense that it was an illusion because there's this audience member sitting there listening to him, going. And then, wait, what happened? You know, so. And she would sort of start to ask questions and advocate and, you know, walk around and sort of start to poke holes and things.

Emily Maltby:

So it was about understanding what he's doing in the creation of this story and that he genuinely believes it. I mean, he's not. Again, he's not sitting there going, like, how can I create a story to make this palatable? He believes that. He believes this to be true. And then it's our job as the audience and Dr. Ray's job as the character to sort of shatter that. And really, ultimately, Dolores Job in the final scene to to sort of shatter that for him.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And how did audiences respond to it? I saw a trailer that York did about getting different people who saw the presentation.

Emily Maltby:

I really, really liked it. I think that a lot of the choices were really strong and interesting, and the music is amazing. Generally, I'm just gushing. It was super good, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was such an interesting production, and I was so interested to see how it was going to be in comparison to the book and the movie. And I thought that it was astoundingly original. It was so well cast. I thought it was incredible.

Emily Maltby:

It had the same kind of macabre humor as Sweeney Todd. So even though the subject matter is horrifying, it works. I thought that the lead was absolutely amazing. I came into it a little apprehensively, but I was very, very pleasantly surprised. Absolutely love that they took such a heavy plot and remade it into an amazing story.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

But as far as your own personal reaction, watching it, but also in people that spoke to you about it, you.

Emily Maltby:

Know, I got a lot of really positive feedback. Some folks who said things like, you know, Lolita is not usually done in a way that accurately portrays the experience of or attempts to. And there was a lot of recognition for our attempt to carve out space for her and carve out space for what was actually happening. And that was really meaningful because that was really important to me. And that was sort of what I went into, this whole project. That was the goal of the project, or at least the goal of my working on the project. I think in so doing, it allowed some of the writing to actually be able to be heard, because I think some of the initial reactions to the piece originally were horror, as would be, because it's an absolutely horrifying subject matter. But I think in acknowledging that and in embracing that, I think we were able to hear the piece a little bit.

Emily Maltby:

So I think the response was good. I mean, it was. It was challenging, I have to say. I mean, because, again, it was such a short process and it was such sensitive material, but I got some really interesting feedback about it, which was useful and worthwhile.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. Whenever touchy, controversial subjects then get put on a stage and what happens to them. And so I think it's interesting exploration.

Emily Maltby:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's funny. This was a staged reading that I did in 2019, and it's by far the thing I get asked the most about my whole career. I've done three podcasts about it. I've got. I was interviewed For. I was interviewed for a German student's thesis. I was asked to write an essay for a book that never got published.

Emily Maltby:

I mean, I had. This is. I have never in my life had anything at, like, had, like, been asked to talk about this as much as I've been asked to talk about, which I. I mean, it makes sense. It's. It's. First of all, it's an interesting, like, piece of Broadway lore. And it's such a.

Emily Maltby:

I mean, when I got this email, like, I was like, someone wrote a musical of Lolita. Like, that is what. Like, they must be insane. And. And. And so there's that.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And then Edward Albee did a play about it.

Emily Maltby:

It's all. And people are utterly fascinated by this book. I mean, this book has. I mean, it's an. It really is an extraordinary book. It really is. But it. You know, it.

Emily Maltby:

This. There is a fascination with this story that is very pervasive. It was interesting coming to this musical without any. Without any of that. I. You know, I never read it. I didn't know really much about it, and so I kind of had no choice but to take it as it was. And.

Emily Maltby:

And. Which I think was helpful, which I think it helped me kind of go, wait, okay, hold on. If I have to put this scene on stage, like, what. How can I do that in a way that, like, my point of view as a director, as a woman, as a person alive in 20 at the time, 19, you know, how can I make that feel like there's a reason why we're performing it now?

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Right, Exactly. Yeah. And it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall, as Lerner and Barry were, I assume, asking that same question, like, what are we doing? And it's interesting just the progression of its early draft to when it left Boston and was about to come to Broadway and Lerner was continuing to work, evolve, adjust the point of view. So it seems like it was going through its own evolution as well.

Emily Maltby:

Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine adapting Lolita to the. A musical to be an easy process. Like, you know, especially with no women on the team, you know, like, there's not really anyone there to advocate for her. So, you know, just to say.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I can see why. Why you get asked about it. Yeah. Especially since it's the only New York production. It's, you know, Alan Jay Lerner. So there's that history.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So. Yeah.

Emily Maltby:

There's so many parts about it that are fascinating, that are really, really fascinating. Yeah. There was this huge New York Times profile on it. I was like, I have never in my life had this much press about one reading.

OUTRO: Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media with me Patrick Oliver Jones as writer and executive producer. Blake Stadnik created the theme music and 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 Emily Maltby for sharing her experiences in bringing Lolita My Love to the New York stage. Be sure to join us next time as another show makes its way to Closing Night.