I paid US$68 to see Harry Potter naked

Yeah, that probably sums it up.

As it is widely known, Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) has been spending the last few months on Broadway. He is playing the lead role in Equus - a 3-hour play about a boy who blinded six horses in one night. The case is real although the characters and the circumstances were all fiction.

I mentioned that I found "Chicago" boring but on hindsight, it could be because I had already seen the movie. In any case, there is only one Richard Gere. But I wanted to give Broadway another try and I chose Equus. My reasoning was that even if the play suck, at least I can say that I have seen Harry Potter naked. You see, the play kicked up some controversy because Harry Potter was naked for the last ten minutes. There was supposed to be a sex scene between Potter and a girl (Jill) where they both got naked.

I must say, the play was brilliant. Coming from me, there is quite high praise. That said, be warned that the first part of the play was damn slow paced. I dozed off like twice when some of the characters went into monologue. Yawn. But if you can get past the boring monologue which can get sometimes pretentious and self-indulgent (think Anne Rice writing a theatre play about vampires i.e. Lestat - snore), the second part picked up considerably.

Essentially, the play is about a psychiatrist who tries to find out why a 17 yr old young man blinded 6 horses in one night. Needless to say, Harry Potter was a very disturbed young man who had this really pathological religious and sexual fascination with horses. Some parts of the play can be quite disturbing - if you are a stupid six year-old who never watches TV. But some parts are pretty sexual like when Potter started to "massage" the horses which are just actors with wire-trussed up horse heads. Oh yeah, there is also one part in which Potter became so obsessed with horses that he started to worship them, create entire bible references to horses and then started to whip himself with a clothes hanger. Like the albino monk from Opus Die in the Da Vinci Code. Creepy. The pace picks up after the intermission as we find out the real reason why Potter blinds six horses.

So the sex scene. Harry Potter's female fans will be glad to know that Harry Potter's "magic wand" is ok for a boy of his age. Not tiny, damaged or anything. Everything appears to be intact. I was looking out for the girl (but of course) who was very pretty and a pretty, naked girl is not a bad thing.

The play got a standing ovation. I think I was privileged to be with a loud and appreciative crowd. But what was really special was that in order to raise money for AIDS awareness, the entire cast appeared on stage and proceeded to auction the playscript. Bidding started at US$250. To make things more exciting, each actor/actress put on their brightest lipstick and kiss the script. When Harry Potter kissed the script, bidding for the script jumped from US$500 to US$1000. It was pretty wild. Bidding was fast and furious and surprise(not), the bidders were all women. I was frankly shocked that no woman from the balcony threw her bra at Potter. Harry Potter himself was very game about the whole thing. You got to admire his stamina. Imagine doing this same shit every night for months and months (think the whole show ends at Feb 09) and yet appeared smiling and enthusiastic about the whole thing. From where I was sitting, Potter looked like he still got what it takes to make the one last HP movie.

The final script was sold for US$2100. Well, I can cross one more item i.e. see Harry Potter naked from my "NY to see and do list" now.