Still in San Francisco. R and I went to see the stage adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at The Curran. She had been given free tickets from a colleague, who had praised the play, and asked me at the beginning of my stay if I wanted to go, if only for fun. Since R and I tend to say yes to the stupid things in jolly moods—spontaneous palm readings, spontaneous tattoos, spontaneous drinks from strangers (although R isn’t anymore)—I agreed.
I don’t know what I expected. I hadn’t read the book, hadn’t been to the theater in over two years, and couldn’t quite imagine the idea of Potter magic, live, on stage. But the piece had had great reviews and had sold out for months. So maybe we were in for a pleasant surprise! I decided to let it all come to me without judgment.
To maintain that positive attitude, I took a few hits on a joint before we walked into the theater – just to get a little more jolly. That turned out to be a grave mistake. Because the joint contained way too strong, barely tobacco-mixed California weed, I was practically brain dead by the time we stood in line to have our tickets scanned. We were led almost to the stage by the attendant to two seats. Normally I would have been very disappointed by that, but in the meantime I was no longer capable of any emotion. We sat down, I waited with a slow grin for the performance to begin.
Well, he did. With violence. After an hour and a half of stoned watching adult people in bad wigs and school uniforms running dramatically with cloaks fluttering over a (beautifully built) set, I was so overstimulated that I stuck my fingers in my ears to stop listening to the lame jokes and screaming dialogues. having to listen. Mine high had turned into an all-destroying panic-driven low. R, meanwhile, grimly read through the flyer, extremely confused by the plot unleashed on us at a faster rate than the average Christopher Nolan movie.
The low point came around the intermission (the piece lasted an incredible three hours and thirty minutes), when a bunch of Dementors appeared onstage to kill a character. The ragged skeletons flew writhing through the auditorium, sliding past and through the audience, lit in white, accompanied by eerie music. The Dementors screeched and I screeched along. When I came back from the bathroom after the break, pale and sweating, a small blond woman was yelling at a security guard that her 6- and 8-year-old children ‘completely and utterly traumatized’ were because of this wicked play. The attendant bellowed from behind his mouth mask that no one forced her to stay. She threatened to sue. Meanwhile, people pounded each other to the side to quickly buy a bowl of popcorn before the play started again. Shaky, I braced myself for the second round.
Afterwards, R and I took a dazed taxi home.
‘What did you think?’ I asked. R was silent for a long time, looking sadly out the window.
“The special effects were nice,” she said.
Simone Atangana Bekono is a poet and writer. Her debut novel ‘Confrontations‘ was awarded the Anton Wachter prize this year.