Warning: this play might make you wish your conversation was wittier and your brain was bigger. You may also vow to pick up Lolita again and actually read it this time.

San Francisco playwright Trevor Allen is a master of blending disparate stories into a seamless whole that sticks with you, possibly because the pieces are still falling into place days later. (There was a lot of "Oh, wait, NOW I get it" at breakfast the next morning.) Julia is a Nabokov scholar who comes packed with neuroses and dark secrets. She picks up the hitchhiking young hustler Danny and together they retrace Nabokov's 1941 journey from New York to Stanford. Receiving its world premiere at San Jose Stage, Lolita Roadtrip isAllen’s funny and haunting ode to redemption, examining the passions, perversions, and pain beneath Nobokov's seminal work and the lives that run parallel to it. 

Through May 1. San Jose Stage, 490 South First St., San Jose. Tickets are $20-45 at 408-283-7142 or thestage.org.