Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

[Casi]

Did anyone else got a midnight release party? Mine lacked the sense of celebration that I remember from the old days, but it was still a nice little throw back for me, personally. Lots of people in robes, but fewer in actual costumes. It's a new generation of Harry Potter fans, it seems like. They were all so much younger than me!

I have't finished reading the book as of yet so I don't have anything needing spoiler tags but I will say that, as of Act 1, I'm very intrigued. I like it so far. I do have one criticism, but I'm going to save it for when I've actually finished and can talk about the whole thing.

Anyone else reading it right now?

[Loz]

Our release is 0900. Haven't had time to finish, but I Scorpius.

[Casi]

Me too! He's so the highlight for me so far.

[Beck]

I bought it today, the question is do I read it first or let Sean? (The answer is me )

[Casi]

I know right? Mother and I both bought a copy even though we literally only need one, but were we going to share? Absolutely not.

[Lizzie]

I'm a big HP fan (have met JKR, have signed books) and I haven't even bought this yet.

[Loz]

Finished it. Loved it. It's not JK's words (and that's obvious in parts) but it's the characters I adore. And yeah, Scorpius is up there with my favourite characters now. Never expected that!! He is gold. Flat out gold

[Beck]

I can't read it yet, Sean stole it!

[Casi]

I posted a honken long review but it's totally spoilery so I'll sit on it for a little while longer

[Beck]

Pop it in spoiler tags

[Casi]

I think I can do that!

Last night, I finished Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the wee hours of the morning, and I sat for awhile, wondering how I felt about it. And I wasn’t sure. I slept on it. I thought about it all this morning. And I’m still not entirely sure. Overall? I think it was a little…meh. That’s not to say BAD. I think it was a very enjoyable play. I think it would be amazing to watch on stage. If they can pull off even half the magic they describe in the stage directions then there is no amount of money I wouldn’t pay to see this. How was it as a read, though? Well…I guess I just don’t consider it Harry Potter.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}I keep, in my head, comparing it to the Very Potter musicals. Those were parody, and even more simplified than this, but they managed to capture the heart and magic of the thing, and for that I give them mad props. I feel like the Harry/Ron relationship was better portrayed in those things than in the damn movies. And I think that’s kind of what they tried to do here. A very simple story (comparatively) that is trying to cram a lot of laughter, a lot of heart, and a lot of magic into a two hour run time. It’s hard to put the failings of this story into exact words, when really it’s just an overall feeling. Something was missing, and it comes through in so many little ways that it’s hard to point at one example and say there, that’s the trouble.

But as far as plays go? I thought it was good. It doesn’t force feed its actors, it’s got some funny moments, and it’s got some depth. It also doesn’t completely retell the original books (which I was afraid it might try to do) nor does it try to go bigger and “better” like so many tv shows and sequels try to do. What we fought a superhuman monster last time? Well…this time…um….we’ll fight a GOD. No, it doesn’t do that, for which I was incredibly grateful. It’ll never hold up to the originals because it’s not the same kind of story, it’s not told in the same way, and it’s not meant to be.

From here on in there will be spoilers.

The plot deals with Harry Potter’s youngest son, Albus, going off to Hogwarts. He and his father have a troubled relationship, Albus constantly living in Harry’s shadow, and Harry unable to connect with and understand his son. When Albus is sorted into Slytherin, he’s largely written off by most of the school. Unpopular and alone, he befriends Draco Malfoy’s son, Scorpius, who is, in my opinion, this play’s great shining addition to the Harry Potter canon. I loved Scorpius. With a firey passion.

When Amos Diggory begs Harry to use a Ministry confiscated time turner to go back and save his son, Cedric, Harry refuses with a heavy heart. Albus and Scorpius, with the help of Amos’s niece, take it upon themselves to not only steal that time turner, but go back and try to save Cedric. By their logic, they figure if they can just stop him from winning the Triwizard Tournament with Harry, he will be saved, and everything will be fine. Their first attempt fails, but manages to rewrite enough time to cause real damage, including the dissolution of a marriage and the birth of two people, Rose and Hugo Granger-Weasley.

The boys go back to try again, this time succeeding, but what they hadn’t counted on was that Cedric, humiliated by his loss in the tournament, would cause enough damage to completely rewrite the Battle of Hogwarts. Suddenly Scorpius finds himself alone in a world where the Dark Lord killed Harry Potter, and must enlist the help of Severus Snape to set things to rights.

The culmination of the story centers around Amos Diggory’s “niece,” who, as it turns out, was a dark witch in hiding. And not just any witch. She is, if you can believe it, the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. She had been trying so hard to create a world in which her father won the war, only to be thwarted. In a last ditch effort, with Scorpius and Albus clinging along for the ride, she goes back in time to Godric’s Hollow, in a desperate attempt to prevent Voldemort from trying to kill Harry, and thus destroying himself. While she ultimately fails, the audience is left to watch with Harry, his family, and his friends, as his parents are killed and his home destroyed, knowing they can do nothing to prevent it.

The end of this play was very poignant. It served less as the adventure story most of the original books seemed to be and more as a story of father and son. Of one generation trying to understand the other. Was it successful? Yes and no. I rarely felt as though Harry was, in fact Harry Potter when he was with his son. When he was alone, or with Ginny, or his friends, he felt real. But the moment Albus came on stage, he always seemed to be a completely different, unrecognizable person. Perhaps that was the point. I’m not sure. But it left me feeling a little hollow when all was said and done.

But that, by far, was not the story’s biggest sin.

On the subject of Cedric Diggory:

To start with, I want to talk about why Cedric was an important character in the original series. Cedric, for all intents and purposes, was dead before we ever even met him. He was written into the story for the expressed purpose of being a good person who died for no reason. And he did that well. He was everything Dumbledore said he was “a boy who was good, and kind, and brave.” He came from the most unassuming of houses. He helped Harry when the opportunity arose. He was a good sportsman. He was popular but not coasting on that popularity. Cedric Diggory was, simply put, a good kid, who was born to die so the plot could progress.

If Cedric had not been in the graveyard, say, Harry got to the cup just a split second before he did or something, would the story have progressed in the same way? I think so. He was, as is so often pointed out in Cursed Child, the spare. But it wouldn’t have progressed the same for the reader. Cedric was the first real death for us. This was the end of the fourth book, the longest so far in the series when it came out, at least twice the size, if not more, of the book that came before it. And, up until then, the only person who had ever been killed was evil. And we never even really saw it happen. Here, in Goblet of Fire, we had a young man who had been built up as someone to admire and respect, laying dead on the ground at our feet with a suddenness that took our breath away. Like Harry, we weren’t even given the chance to mourn him, so quickly did the story progress. His death was the death of the childlike wonder that had accompanied the previous books. This was no longer a story for kids. This was a story for adults.

Cedric Diggory’s death became the linchpin that held the first half of the series to the second.

So imagine my confusion, and even my outrage, when he was first used as a punchline, and then turned into a Death Eater. And not just any Death Eater, but the one who kills Neville Longbottom and hands victory to the Dark Lord.

This boy, who stood for everything good and innocent in the world that was, and would be, snuffed out by Voldemort, became so bitter over losing a competition that he became a murderer in approximately a year and a half. But let’s put that in even bigger context. Cedric Diggory, the official Hogwarts Champion, the pinnacle of everything it meant to be a good student, a good person, and a representative of his school, was SO BITTER about losing the Triwizard Tournament, that he became the FIRST dark wizard to come out of Hufflepuff in the school’s ENTIRE history.

This is what Cursed Child did to him. And I am not okay with that.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad I read it. I would recommend anyone who’s a fan of Harry Potter give it a read simply because it IS canon and it IS the last Harry Potter story we’re going to get. And Scorpius is worth it, trust me on that one. If it ever comes to America, I will break my neck trying to see it on stage. But don’t go in thinking this is going to be in any way like the original books, either story-wise, thematically, or even just overall quality. It’s not. If you want a play that better encompasses that, I would suggest A Very Potter Musical. It’s funny, it’s ridiculous at times, but it understands the fans in a way that I never felt like this play did. But then I don’t know that this story was really written for me. Looking back at it, I feel like maybe it’s not just about the next generation, but it’s for the next generation. It’s for the kids that were born into a world that already had Harry Potter. When the original books came out, they were intended for 11 year olds, and this has a similar feeling. This story was for the new fans, not the old. And in that, perhaps it serves them better than it served me.

So read it. It’s worth it. But take it for what it is, and not what we wish it would have been.