'Cursed Child' only half the Potter experience
It was only a matter of time.
J.K. Rowling, rich as she is, probably always knew she’d have to return to Harry Potter at some point. A franchise as popular and lucrative as the Wizarding World needs its marquee star.
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” isn’t exactly what anyone expected. The two-part London stage play picks up 19 years after the events of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and focuses more on Harry’s middle child, Albus, and his best friend Scorpius Malfoy, son of Potter rival, Draco Malfoy.
The script of the play, credited to Jack Thorne with story by Rowling, Thorne and John Tiffany, was released in book form on Sunday, and Potter-fans (Potter-philes? Potter-Pots?) likely finished reading it before brunch. The bulk of the 300+ pages is dialogue, broken up sporadically by limited stage direction.
So the book version of “Cursed Child” is not the ideal form to devour the eighth Harry Potter story. It helps to have the images of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and the rest of the movie cast fresh on the brain, even if you have to imagine them two decades older.
While it can be easy to dismiss the series as children’s literature, the success of Harry Potter has always stemmed from Rowling’s words. In a place as complex as Hogwarts, spoken dialogue was never enough to properly convey the magic, and Rowling’s descriptions obviously conjured a whole new world for her readers. In “Cursed Child,” the reader must fill in those environments on their own.
Much of the character work in the “Cursed Child” is quite good, with the relationships between Albus and Harry, and Albus and Scorpius, anchoring the emotional beats of the four-act story. Some of the dialogue reads a bit cheesy, but good actors could navigate around some of the obviousness on the page. Maybe readers who fancy themselves as thespians can slow down and read through some of that content better.
The plot of “Cursed Child,” however, is somewhat disappointing. It involves time travel, and those familiar with such stories will be a few steps ahead of where the script goes in the second half.
The time travel allows for some memorable reappearances by beloved characters. Most of what works ties directly into the strained central relationship of Harry and Albus, and the final act manages to throw enough new ideas out there to reach a point of finality for Harry that “Deathly Hallows” couldn’t quite provide.
Ideally, the “Cursed Child” will find its way to American stages and eventually the big screen, and only then will the story feel complete. You definitely get a sense you’re missing something by not seeing the show. While it may not be a fair comparison, the music of “Hamilton” has a transcendent quality that is enthralling even to listeners who will never get to see the stage show (music, to be fair, is more directly influential than dialogue on a page, “Hamilton” music especially, so maybe this argument is extra unfair).
Still, nothing in “Cursed Child,” on the page anyway, takes a similar leap. The script is an affable diversion. It’s better than reading a Wikipedia entry on the eighth Harry Potter story, but the reader remains at a distance. It needs a little more Rowling magic.
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.