Of Hogwarts and Hamlet …
Because students in the Harry Potter novels board the train to Hogwarts at Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross railway station in London, King’s Cross has erected a sign at a wall between tracks 9 and 10 to commemorate this.
Harry met Juliet and Romeo two Friday nights ago in Princeton, but their fans never connected or showed any willingness to interact.
It might be a productive sociological and cultural event to take a magic wand or pixie dust and arrange for a meeting of the minds between Shakespeare and Rowling aficionados. Perhaps we need to start with matchmaker Cliff, as in CliffsNotes.
Although I have been accused of wearing attention-grabbing outfits, I was barely noticeable July 20 when I attended the Palmer Square festival celebrating everything Harry Potter. Without a broom, wand or sword only my funky orange and purple and green earrings I was making my way to McCarter Theatre to see the New Jersey Opera production of “Romeo and Juliette” and got hijacked by the pre-”Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows” book release block party organized and hosted by Princeton toy store JaZams.
Many individuals in the reportedly 2,500-person crowd of predominantly pre-teens and pre-pre-teens, plus their grown-up escorts, were wearing costumes far more interesting than my attire.
The 10-year-old daughter of a friend handed me a black pointy sorcerer’s hat and told me to replace my “boring” straw chapeau. I told my costume reviewer that my straw hat was more appropriate for where I was going to an opera that tells the story of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” through the music of Charles Gounod. She and her friends gave me a blank spell-like stare in return.
After reluctantly leaving the Palmer Square festivities, I took my seat at McCarter’s Berlind Theater for New Jersey Opera’s superb production where the onstage outfits were noticeably compatible with the Harry Potter party costumes. But the costume compatibility did nothing to bring the two crowds together. I talked to several theater-goers during the intermissions, and I came to the conclusion that the McCarter crowd seemed to be a counter-Harry Potter culture.
When I recounted the happy activities going on in Palmer Square to a few of the opera-goers, I got the same blank stare I had received earlier from the Harry Potter fan. As soon as I started confiding in people that I was a cultural ignoramus because I had read only one Harry Potter book, I assumed the role of a Harry Potter confessional priest. Several people all of whom would qualify as senior citizens confided that they, too, had never read Potter. Some bragged how they never “succumbed” to the “obscene” marketing pressure to buy one of the books or a ticket to one of the Potter movies.
I could relate to being part of a ‘60s-style rebellion against a consumer consumptive fad, but refusing to read Harry Potter seemed to me to be an illogical way to be true to one’s roots. Such an attitude would serve only to create a greater communications gulf between the Harry generation and the un-Harry generation.
In fact, both literary creations have enormous intergenerational appeal. After all, the lead characters in “Romeo and Juliet” are about the same age as the majority of Potter fans.
And my adult friends (as well as many book reviewers) who have read Harry Potter without the urging of a younger generation advocate have been amazed by the quality of the prose, the descriptions, the dramatic tension. And when, later in the week, I explained to my hat-critic that “West Side Story” is based on “Romeo and Juliet,” she was stunned. She and her friends had seen a video of “West Side Story” and thought it was “awesome.”
Princeton, being a progressive arts community, should make its mark on the New Jersey cultural scene by getting the Arts Council of Princeton to create a Bridge Festival that features truly intergenerational arts celebrations and events, not geared to a particular age group i.e., no “children’s theater” label, just good art.
Such a trend may inspire Princeton University, in the throes of planning an arts complex in the vicinity of the Princeton train station, to add a Platform 9¾ to the Dinky station.
Now the real question is which sounds more childish Dinky or Platform 9-3/4?
A longtime resident of Princeton, Pam Hersh is vice president for government and community affairs with Princeton HealthCare System and a former managing editor of The Princeton Packet