MICHAEL WEST,
Sir, - I am the author of the adaptation of Lolita currently running at the Peacock Theatre, which was the subject of a lengthy and thought-provoking review by Fintan O'Toole in your edition of September 6th. Mr O'Toole's accusation that our production is an aesthetic version of "no comment" on the issue of child abuse surely demands a reply, since silence might convey mute acceptance.
In the course of his review he makes a number of points, some of which are morally as well as aesthetically questionable.
He sets his stall out with customary forthrightness: "Lolita is not a novel about child sexual abuse." His concluding summary of our work is that "it represents Lolita as a seductive siren, and that her rape by Humbert is an act of love." We strenuously deny both assertions, and on a number of counts.
First, his argument implies that somewhere between its appearance as a novel in 1959 and its production on the stage in 2002, we have somehow insinuated the subject of child abuse into the material of Lolita of our own accord.
Far more seriously, it also implies that, intentionally or not, we misrepresent the plight of Nabokov's fictional heroine, and, by analogy, the plight of all victims of sexual abuse, in the distorted "morally obnoxious" manner described above.
It goes without saying that we find these two central assertions to be highly subjective valuations. But there is a more important issue here than simply disagreeing with Mr O'Toole's assessment. He quite rightly points to the difficulty of adapting such an archly charming, problematic text. In the novel the action is mediated through the impossibly literate and louche narrator, Humbert Humbert. But to claim that "its only character is the narrative voice" is disingenuous, as is his claim that "the voice does not rape a 12-year-old child called Lolita". It is one thing to accept that not everything Humbert tells us might be true, and another thing entirely to suggest that the events described are not the story of a 36-year-old European academic's lust for a 12-year-old girl.
What is certainly true is that adapting such a story, even one told with the wicked irreverence displayed by Nabokov, poses important aesthetic and moral dilemmas. Nabokov himself must have been aware of these since he made the choices which have guided our production. The most important of these is the decision to represent the action as "objective" - that is, not to present the action as inside Humbert's head, but as in the world. This means, unavoidably, casting a Lolita.
For Mr O'Toole, however, "if Lolita is not a pawn in a game of verbal chess but a character meant to represent a real human being, then the story is a vicious lie," and our production tantamount to a "paedophile's charter".
We see it differently.
The challenge is to present Lolita as a living, breathing human who happens to be 12 years old. Our intention all along was to tell her story and to make the audience feel for her, and what happened to her.
Aesthetically, we felt that this choice was strongest in the casting of an adult actor who can play a child in the extremely exaggerated and stylised version of theatre that is commedia dell'arte. This distancing effect removes the voyeuristic or prurient aspect of watching a seduction, while heightening the emotional impact of the events on stage. For all its acknowledged limitations as a work of art, the screen adaptation offers a life to Lolita, and we have attempted to honour that life in good faith.
Lolita and Humbert are fictional characters. In the novel one is seen through the eyes of the other. On the stage they appear side by side. They are presented as grotesque, but human; their story is one of cruelty, obsession and abuse; for all the face-paint and stylised direction, they are not caricatures of morality in simple black and white.
The sense of responsibility for these images which Mr O'Toole asks for, and claims we lack, is something we strongly feel we have accepted in all our choices. What to represent on stage, and how, is the essence of our work, and not something we take lightly.
Fintan O'Toole's argument is that if the novel is not about sex abuse, we are guilty of misrepresentation by showing that it lies at the core of Lolita. He then accuses us, by our staging such a travesty, of wilfully distorting the portrayal of child sex abuse in and of itself. Thus we are not allowed to admit that sex abuse is the subject, and we are not allowed to portray that subject.
This is not criticism; this is a censor's charter. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL WEST,
Heytesbury Lane,
Dublin 4.