REVIEW: 'Harry Potter And The Cursed Child'

Surprise! Another Harry Potter! In 2016, this awful, awful year where in order to fill a nebulous void that threatens to engulf us all; every intellectual property from our childhoods is returning. It reminds me of just before the fall of Narnia, when Aslan summons back everyone from the previous books to witness this destruction together - as time itself seems to unfold. Star Wars is back. Ghostbusters. Pokemon. Star Trek. And now Harry Potter.

Except it's a play, which seems to have confused both fans and people claiming to be critics. I'm always simultaneously amused and depressed by idiotic general audiences, but I can't believe some of these people are paid to write reviews. They claim that, as it is a playscript, then the book feels 'incomplete' and 'unfinished.' Because they clearly have never read a script before...which is worrying. I'm just some random guy with a blog, and I'm perfectly familiar with the medium. I understand that your average reader may have been misled by the marketing to believe this is an eight Harry Potter novel, but professional reviewers? No wonder people don't listen to them.

What surprised me was how readable the script was. For years I thought Shakespeare was a terrible writer because of how wordy he is on the page. Thousands of children hate the man because they're forced to read him in a stuffy classroom, underlining phrases to use in essays. Shakespeare is supposed to be performed. You could read Twelfth Night without finding a single joke, but you can watch a performance and laugh so much it hurts. Similarly, Harold Pinter is lifeless in script form. Oh and, aside from Waiting For Godot, don't even try to read Samuel Beckett. You'll be lost.

Here though, I can clearly see how the play might unfold without needing visual reference. JK Rowling has taken full advantage of her theatrical collaborators, and the narrative perfectly fits around the stage. The action is both plausible yet at the same time seemingly impossible. There are several set-pieces that I yearn to see live because my mind unravels working out the logistics of the whole thing. I imagine witnessing some of this would seem very much like magic.

But, since tickets are rare, you have to go to the West End to see this, and the trains in southern England are so terrible they've more or less shut us out of London; this playscript is the only way most of us will be able to experience Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. So imagination will be all we have. I suppose this is how we were introduced to Harry Potter in the first place...

Yeah...you're probably not going to see this. 

I'm still annoyed this is split into two parts. There's enough going on to justify the length, yet if you're really going to stage two plays then you should either go down the Angels In America route and make audiences wait a year before part 2, or just mash the two plays together into one immense piece with two intermissions. The script even says 'Act 3' and 'Act 4' rather than 'Act 1 Part 2' and 'Act 2 Part 2' so the cynic in me really thinks this is just an opportunity to charge for two tickets. Though, it's admirable that the theatre company is trying to keep ticket prices down so viewers don't feel completely ripped off.

I should complain about the dialogue, yet I feel this could be ignored if it was coming from an actors mouth rather than a voice in my head. Many lines just feel clunky, and there's a consistency problem. Several of the teenagers dialogue sound like lines an adult would speak, and vice versa. Probably the worst two lines come here:

"...it doesn't make your negligence negligible."

"Then it's a negligence I too shall face."

It's difficult to tell if these lines are supposed to be a joke or not. I feel like it should be, yet this is actually a very serious scene. If it's a joke then it's a flimsy one that doesn't make sense given the context and people speaking them, yet if it's serious then wow. How did this get past several drafts and cast read-throughs? The best part of play-writing is how the writing is shaped by everyone. Shakespeare probably only wrote about half of his work. It doesn't feel like that here. It's possible the version we're all reading is an earlier one to the version being performed now, as it takes time to print a book whilst a play can be changed right at the last second.

Perhaps the idea of children being more adult whilst the adults regress to childhood is deliberate. Another aspect I don't like is how Harry and Hermionie have risen to the two most senior positions of the Ministry of Magic, yet together they act like they're back at school as part of the dream team solving mysteries. Ron often drops in on major meetings despite the fact he runs a joke shop and therefore has absolutely no place within the Ministry. A particularly baffling moment comes when Harry starts having strange dreams again and so Hermionie naturally calls a major meeting. Can you imagine Theresa May holding an emergency cabinet meeting because Phillip Hammond had a nightmare?

And after all this time they're still squabbling with Draco Malfoy! For some reason he's been given a major position in government too despite being a former Death Eater whose father escaped from prison. Obviously Draco's relationship with Harry has changed a lot, but ultimately I feel as though I'm still looking at the same teenagers from the books instead of grown up versions.

This is a shame because my favourite part of the whole play is the dynamic between Harry Potter and his son, Albus. I have all too much experience of being a disappointment to my father, so it's not hard imagining how Albus feels and sympathising with his pain. Meanwhile, Harry is the only character who, when he acts like a teenager again, seems to be going through a mid-life crisis. His days of being humanities saviour and conquering the forces of evil are gone. He's now an adult swamped with paperwork, a family, and responsibility. He didn't even get his dream job as an Auror. The magic is all gone. He's done everything he could do, and now his life is over.

I can't help but imagine that JK Rowling is feeling the same way. She was a single mother living in near-poverty who ended up writing one of the highest selling novels of all time. She was soon catapulted into success after success. Seven bestselling novels. Eight blockbuster films. One enormous franchise. She's become one of the most famous people in the world.

Then it stopped. The last book was published, the last film released. JK Rowling was free from Harry Potter. The Casual Vacancy came out. She wrote (and continues to write) crime novels under a pseudonym. Obviously people don't like them as much as Harry Potter, but Rowling wasn't expecting to create another Harry Potter. She knows she'll never reach that height again, and is wise enough to stop trying.

Yet she wants to return to the magic. Just one more adventure to capture the old times, to feel the same wonder. I think this is how every Harry Potter fan feels. I was barely able to read when I first experienced The Philosophers Stone. I was a teenager by the time of The Deathly Hallows. I don't really consider myself a fan of anything anymore, but I cannot separate Harry Potter from my childhood. And now I have a job and I'm supposed to get everything in order even though the government keeps introducing new legislation that negatively affects me whilst also cutting support I rely on. My generation is being simultaneously sold out and separated. We all feel terrible, and so the time is perfect to escape back into the world of Harry Potter - the world of our childhoods.

The thing is: I can't. Because - and I experience no pleasure in saying this - whilst the set-up is great, this script is a bit awful.

Re-reading the whole Harry Potter series earlier this summer, what impressed me was how each novel, and by extension the overarching story, resembled a ball of string. We're presented a mystery within a mysterious world, and it all slowly gets unravelled. There aren't loose threads or contrivances; everything by the end is a nice, flat line. The series definitely isn't without fault, but aside from Harry's implausible resurrection, there's a mindless satisfaction watching every piece of the puzzle be slotted into place. You're not really required to think about Harry Potter. Rather, you relax and feel the magic working.

As you've probably predicted, The Cursed Child isn't like this. At times the first part of the story manages to recapture this doctrine of feeling instead of thinking, but by the second part contrivance after contrivance begins to pile up until the mindless haze is lost. Without wishing to spoil the plot; there's time travel involved. Considering the time-turner sequence in Prisoner Of Azkaban is one of the more controversial parts of Harry Potter, I'm amazed Rowling dared to venture down this route again. I'm equally amazed considering this is exactly the same route fan-fiction and amateurish sequels always goes down. Remember Terminator: Genesis? No? That's what I thought too.

Because this plot feels so much like fan-fiction. Characters don't act consistently, contrivances are abundant, and ridiculous conspiracies are made canon. The crisis point towards the end of the play revolves around a plot-device being lost, only for a character to go: "surprise! I had another plot-device on me all along!" without any set-up. The central conflict revolves around a relatively minor incident that occurred in the novels, which for some reason only comes back to haunt everyone now after all this time.

And there's all the problems time-travel brings to any story. What precisely are the rules? When you travel in time, are you part of a single reality or are you crossing into a parallel timeline and every change you make results in a split rather than a finite change? Does the change result in that change having always happened, or do characters know something's been changed? Is it possible to create an infinite loop where altering either a past version of yourself or your ancestors results in you never existing thus meaning you never made the decision to alter a past version of yourself or your ancestors? Or would this merely create side-effects within your time-line? Would these effects be restricted to yourself, or would they impact the fabric of time itself? Do you see why writers avoid time-travel?

The experience reads like an episode of modern Doctor Who. Act 1 for the most part remains sane, though Draco Malfoy and his son are plagued with rumours so outlandish I can't believe even the most ardent Daily Mai-I mean, Prophet reader would believe it true. But by Act 2 the contrivances begin to pile up in addition to the nonsensical fan-service. Plot-points repeat themselves without anyone learning from it. By Part 2 any hope of character conflict is lost amongst a murder of insanity, to the point that the characters begin to mutate into mere cut-outs simply there to push the story along even though the plot has no idea where it's going. We're forced to make do with characters quickly telling us how they felt whilst off-stage events happened instead of seeing said event.

If you aren't a die-hard fan then you'll be lost, since the plot relies on you knowing the most precise details of previous novels (which the children of this story inexplicably know). And if you are a die-hard fan then you'll be frothing when the plot contradicts Potter-lore. Underage wizards perform magic outside of school, and the Ministry are unable to trace them. Undocumented secret passages appear. To top it all off, the principal antagonist is a person we barely know and the final, crushing plot-twist is absolutely bewildering. If it wasn't such a nice hardback copy then I would've thrown the book from the room. That still didn't prevent my neighbour-waking cry of "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"

Perhaps the so-called 'reviewers' of this piece were correct. The play feels 'incomplete,' but not because it's a playscript. Indeed, stripped of it's theatrical context, the inherent flaws within the narrative are plain for all to see. It's not a spin-off. It's not a reboot or reinvention or add on. It's every Tumblr musing from every fan who really should know better.

Unless they broadcast the show to cinemas, I doubt I'll see it. I'm curious as to how some of the more elaborate sequences are being staged, yet I don't think any stagecraft or acting chops could save this for me. I love you J.K Rowling. Without you, I wouldn't be putting fingers to keyboard. My friends wouldn't be where they are today. Literature as we know it might be dead. Which is why I hope this play merely fades into history as an oddity. When people discuss Harry Potter, they'll list off the novels, discuss their favourites, and should The Cursed Child be mentioned then everyone will say; "I...don't remember that one." "Me neither." "Is it even real?" I don't think so."

"OBLIVIATE!!"