Theater Review—

An Updated Lolita in Hartford

By Julie Stern

HARTFORD — I was a freshman in college when Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian émigré writer and professor of European literature at my university, finally became rich and famous enough to retire from teaching and devote himself entirely to his novels. The secret was out: he had written a “dirty book,” and it sold well enough, along with the movie rights, to keep him on Easy Street for the rest of his life.

Lolita was tricky. The story of pedophile Humbert Humbert’s obsession with a 12-year-old was told in great detail, from the viewpoint of the besotted 40-year-old child-molester, who traipsed across the United States with his beloved nymphet in tow. Many people who read it missed the point and were horribly outraged. But you weren’t supposed to like Humbert, or identify with him.

Rather, the book was an exquisitely written combination portrait of a sociopathic criminal, and a satire of American kitdsch, as the pair wandered from one tourist trap to another in an attempt to keep little Dolores amused.

Now Hartford’s TheaterWorks is dealing with a similar dynamic in David Harrower’s award-winning Blackbird, but set 15 years after the fact: When Una was 12 and Ray in his 40s, they had an affair. He ended up in jail, and she went into therapy.

As the play opens, Ray is out of prison and has rehabilitated himself, with a new identity in a new part of the country, and has worked his way up to some undefined job in a small manufacturing plant. In the garbage-strewn common room where employees eat and take their breaks, he is suddenly confronted by an extremely tightly-wound Una. She has tracked him down through a photograph of his “team”  in the business section of a news magazine, and she has things she wants to say…

Well what would Una have to say under the circumstances? And how would Ray deal with this blast from the past? And what is in her large and heavy pocket book? And how did she really feel about him back then? And how does he feel about her now? And where is all this going?

Viewers are asked not to reveal the twists and turns and surprising ending of the plot, and I don’t intend to. I will say that the acting — Beth Wittig as Una, and J. Tucker Smith as Ray — is impeccable. I loved the fast-food sprawl of the set, and there is a fight coach listed in the credits which gives you something to look forward to.

At the outset, Harrower’s dialogue reminded me a little too much of David Mamet’s, with too much of people speaking at cross purposes and repeating themselves without listening to each other, but it got better. I do think, though, that the playwright began with a situation concept which was real and believable, and then took it in a direction that was not too clear. It allowed for some excellent character interpretation and acting by the performers.

(Performances continue until May 11. See the Enjoy calendar, Theater section; call 860-527-7838 or visit TheaterWorksHartford.org for performance and ticket details and/or reservations.)