culture shock

I’ve been meaning to blog this for weeks but, excuses aside, I’ve just been slack.
In March we had the pleasure of Fox’s dad visiting for two weeks and as a treat, on his last evening, we decided to book a West End show. I’ve seen it written that a true Londoner never pays full price for theatre. I’m as ‘London’ as they come. I was delighted to find £10 tickets to a South African adaptation of Mozart’s Opera, The Magic Flute. Let me establish from the outset that I am not a fan of opera and neither are any of my loved ones. This show, however, is performed by a group from Khayelitsha township in Cape Town and the words ‘adaptation’ and ‘marimbas’ in the blurb quickly put my mind at ease.
On the Friday we slipped into the theatre as the doors were closing and theatre attendants tutted under their breath. I didn’t expect much for £10 so it was no surprise that they ushered us to the left-most seats, in the highest point in the gallery, separated from each other. It didn’t matter that we could only see approximately 22% of the stage because the sound of marimbas was filling the theatre and I was overcome by the music. It was the sound of Africa. Soon the stage began to fill with an array of tribal colours and I started to feel choked up by an overwhelming and rare sense of homesickness.
In the ensuing moments it was another sort of sickness that I would feel. It was as if the very worst thing that could have happened, just did. The sound was no longer a familiar melody but what Ian’s dad would later describe as AFRO-OPERA. My 13-year-old brother and I were sitting behind the rest of our party and as the leading lady began to belt out notes that shouldn’t be imposed on unwilling ears, I could see my mom, Fox and his dad all stiffen. And that is how they would stay for the full two-and-a-half hours of all of our first (and last) opera experience. As I braced myself for Aaron’s objections to bringing him to an opera, I couldn’t believe it when I looked over and he had a contented smile across his face. Life really can throw curveballs.
At interval I plastered a smile across my face and hoped that it would hide the fact that I knew what was coming. Mom stormed over to me, having paled significantly and pleaded, “What did I ever do to you that was so terrible that you would inflict such torment on me?” Her other comments were a bit too obscene to post here. Geoff was more polite but still did little to hide his aversion to being brought to an opera against his will. I think the scariest of all was Fox, who merely stood in silence, a broken man, just staring at me. He was clearly the most deeply affected.
Despite the horror of the unexpected, we all made it through to tell the tale, perhaps Aaron and I a little less scarred than the rest. Maybe next time I’ll do my research a bit better. But then, I always say that, don’t I?