Lolita Roadtrip

2 Men, 2 Women 

120 Minutes
Drama
 

 

This darkly comic play follows Julia (a rebellious Stanford graduate student researching her thesis) and Danny (a hitchhiking teenaged runaway she picks up) as together they retrace novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov's actual 1941 roadtrip from New York to Stanford. A series of cross country adventures ensues, as they confront their own dark pasts and discover what really causes a chrysalis to transform into a butterfly.

 

 

 

"Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to tell stories," says the determined but fragile graduate student in Trevor Allen's "Lolita Roadtrip." The little girl isn't the only one. Stories - true, false and in between - intersect, overlap and jostle each other to telling effect in the world premiere.”

- San Francisco Chronicle

 

"Mystery, history and the puzzle of the subconscious intertwine in Trevor Allen's beguiling new play. The playwright best known for "The Creature" and "Tenders in the Fog" riffs on Nabokovian themes in this captivating piece in its world premiere,… Allen writes such vivid monologues that each of his characters instantly seduce the imagination, although we only here snatches of their tales. One speaks and then another cuts off the reverie, so that we hear each story in counterpoint to the one that came before, like a chaotic musical composition…The playwright beautifully captures the vertigo of burning with love in a chilly universe."

- San Jose Mercury News