Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts 1&2

Why am I revisiting this?

I came across this post on my other, now mothballed, blog and wanted to reintroduce it to my new audience – small though it is. The review was written a couple of days after the play and so it reflects the thoughts I had at the time. Looking at it now, it’s perhaps overenthusiastic in places (!) but it was a brilliant day. It also reminds me that my reviewing style will always be a work in progress! Despite that, I still think it reads pretty well. I know that the storyline has been described, not without some justification, as akin to fanfiction in places, but as a spectacle it’s just outstanding and that’s what I still remember. I now think that I might like to see it again, so I will still #keepthesecrets !

The Original Review

On July 3 2016, I went with my family and my youngest daughter’s best friend to watch both parts of the new Harry Potter play. Our ages ranged from a young at heart Grandmother of retirement age to two 15 year old girls. All of us were Harry Potter fans, which is a good start, but for some of us the magic had diminished slightly as the books and films had finished and there was little new Harry Potter on the horizon. For me, the magic was rekindled to some extent by watching the 8 films over 3 weekends so I was really looking forward to the play and I was ready to enjoy it.
What I saw on the stage over 5 hours of stage time was nothing less than the theatrical event of a generation. Starting where the final film left off it takes us through a dizzying selection of revelations, reminders and plot twists that nearly dislocated my jaw, so often did it drop! Clearly the break from the business of writing for her most famous creations has totally re-energised J.K. Rowling, working with experienced playwrights Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, as she has developed a story that ranks with, and arguably surpasses any of the original novels. The pace is unrelenting, but what really gives it life is an element that was lost in the 5th and 7th books in particular, namely humour. The sheer darkness of the final elements of the series, slightly leavened by the love potion sub plot in the 6th book made it, for me, a real slog in places. The stage play puts the humour front and centre without resorting to obvious lines or caricatures and is frequently hilariously funny. I can’t tell you how much it adds to the enjoyment of the story when even the darkest moments have an element of humour somewhere.
The acting is uniformly excellent and, for those who may be a little concerned, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Draco were note perfect and made you forget that you weren’t watching their film predecessors within minutes of appearing on stage. They were simply wonderful, channelling the books and taking the characters for themselves. Harry himself is weighed down by his job, especially the admin, but there are hints that he is happy to take a back seat after his exploits as a teenager. Either that, or he just isn’t very good without his old partners in crime. Ron is a househusband who runs Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and seems to have settled into both roles very nicely. He certainly seems to be the most content of the trio. Hermione is, of course, driven, ambitious and fiercely determined and as before seems a little frustrated with her friends’ tendency to drift through life. Draco was a very nice surprise with his character now a distinguished shade of grey rather than the jet black of his childhood. His magical battle with Harry in particular is a comedic high point and suggests that their animosity has lessened over the years. The two main younger characters, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy were brilliantly played by Sam Clemmett and Anthony Boyle. As with Neville and Harry in the original story, either of whom could have been the chosen one, both Albus and Scorpius could lay claim to being a cursed child with the weight of their famous fathers hanging on their every action.
Finally, I just wanted to say that the magic created on stage is at times truly astounding. There are so many ‘How did they do that?’ moments that you are quite dizzy at the end. The polyjuice potion scene tops anything I’ve ever seen on the stage, but a couple of other effects had me picking my jaw up off the floor! That together with the sheer brilliance of the costumes, set designers, music and choreography come together to create something as near to perfect as you could imagine. I saw a preview, but it was so slick and so brilliant that it would be the finished article anywhere else in the West End. It is, quite simply the most amazing spectacle and the 5 hours I spent in the theatre on one day just flew by. Just a final word of advice. Try to see both parts on the same day as the end of Part 1 is so incredible that it is unlikely that you will be able to concentrate on work or school until you have seen the Part 2!

Secretskept