Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
Director Frances Hall with James Geagan, who will be playing the role of Humbert Humbert in the upcoming production of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.”
“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.” Or so read the opening lines of Vladimir Nabokov’s cult novel of misguided passion, “Lolita.” With sufficient goading, managing editor Tim Omarzu will recite these lines verbatim from memory, drawn as he is to such alliterative tours de force.
“Yeah, he did that to me on the phone. It’s really funny,” said Frances Hall, whose stage adaptation of the work opens May 25 at Andrews Hall. “I was like ‘I actually might love you a lot,’” she added with a laugh.
The novel swiftly acquired fame upon its release in 1955 for its virtuosic prose as well as its controversial subject matter – the narrator Humbert Humbert’s sexual obsession with 12-year-old Dolores Haze.
“I thought the book was incredibly well-written. It’s really dense, but also really funny if you pick up on the language. Every name in the book is a joke to Nabokov, who loved the English language – of course, he’s Russian,” explained 20-year-old Hall, who was smitten with the novel but has disparaged the 1962 film adaptation by director Stanley Kubrick, whose screenplay she used as an initial framework.
“I took that and then took every word out of it – all of Kubrick’s direction and all that stuff and stuck in every line from the book. I just used it as a frame and added all the language from the book,” she explained and observed that Kubrick’s version relied too heavily on suggestion. “It’s too light,” averred Hall, whose undertaking is particularly ambitious when one considers that, heretofore, she had no dramatic background.
“I’m not the kind of person who will just test waters and just dip my toe in. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it all the way. You either do it or you don’t,” she said. “It drove me. It grabbed ahold of me and it hasn’t let go.”
Hall cast locals Tisha Coates as the titular character and Jim Geagan as her would-be paramour Humbert Humbert. Directing apparently came naturally to Hall, who once thought “the stage was really fruity.”
“It is easy to get people to do what you want – when they’re willing to do it,” she said. “I’ve never had to fire anyone and I’ve never gotten angry with anyone in rehearsal at all. I’ve hardly had to raise my voice.”
Moreover, the challenges of staging “Lolita” have historically had more to do with the material itself rather than the mechanics of production.
“It’s saucy stuff, but it’s not. Look at the stuff that 12-year-olds watch these days,” said Hall, who acknowledges that the morally loaded premise of a man expressing amorous intentions toward a child, no matter how precocious she is drawn, has left a burr in the cultural consciousness.
“A lot of people find this offensive, but I don’t look at it like that. I don’t look at it as offensive, but as a love story. It is a love story. It’s obsession. It’s the same as doing a play about someone addicted to drugs, or gambling or anything else. He’s addicted to this girl,” suggested Hall. “Ultimately, he’s very self-absorbed, very obsessed. It got the better of him and took over. It destroyed everything and everyone around him.”
When asked if her own drive to bring the work to the stage is a form of obsession, Hall offers a considered answer: “It’s a fine line. I think I have more drive because I can separate myself from it. I’m able to go to a party and forget about it, whereas an obsessed person couldn’t,” she said, but later admitted “I get ideas in the middle of the night and I have to get up and think about it.”
Hall’s next project?
“I want to do a series of short plays after this,” she said. “Somehow, I want to find a way to combine Medea and the Metamorphoses.”
“Lolita” plays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday, May 25 and 26 at Andrews Hall at the Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa St., Sonoma. Tickets $8 for students and $10 for general admission and can be purchased at Pharmaca, Readers Books, The Cheese Maker’s Daughter and at the door.
