Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

So this takes me back.

(I last blogged about Cursed Child a few months back when the decision to cast Hermione as a black lady was announced. Let me quickly address that: My objection to that was that no script was being released and switching mediums like this was breaking my mental image of who Hermione was because there was no script being released and so the play was the only authoritative version being presented. A week after I wrote that up, it was announced that the script was actually being released, and so I ended up with egg on my face. But oh well, that closed off that discussion as far as I'm concerned.)

Anyway, let's talk about this then. First without spoilers:

1) The plot and characters are good.

I actually came into this prepared to not like it. Expectations are high for an 8th Harry Potter book and one never knows what an author is going to produce after taking a break from a text for a good decade. But it is a perfectly good Harry Potter text that is a completely valid entry into the canon. It skirts the edges at times, often getting its plot tied into knots with unexpected twists leading to more and more twists. And the fan service element does get a bit extreme after a time and there are moments when Harry's son Albus is irritating and whiny. But while it touches those edges, it doesn't jump right off.

Again, it's good. Often, it's even great. So no worries there.

2) The play would really be better off as a novel.

That's for a pretty basic reason... When new characters step onto the stage, how was I supposed to know what they were supposed to look like? At first I thought that it'd be a good idea to just google image search so I could see what the actor/actress they had cast for that part. But that of course resulted in a plot point being spoiled for me. Fuck.

So you know... a simple cursory description of what a character might look like could have been good, you know?

3) The play really reads more like a movie script.

It's got a frickin' montage for crying out loud. What play has a montage? Do you know how hard it would be to do a montage on stage? Reading through it, I have to say that I think this is probably the most high-budget and staggeringly expensive/difficult to produce plays in human history. I can get how you can do certain parts, but the amount of back-and-forth scene switching, special effects and pyrotechnics this thing would require... well, it'd be staggering.

I'm sure they're managing that over in London of course. If there's ever been a play with a bottomless budget, it's this one. But you won't be seeing productions of this at the local community theatre.

I feel that it's inevitable that this thing is going to be a movie (perhaps even two movies). I'd give it two or three years perhaps. I honestly can't help but feel that it being a play is some sort of grandiose gesture on JK Rowling's part. Her way of trying to breathe some life into an increasingly niche medium perhaps? And you know, that strikes me as a tad bourgeoisie.  As Jim Hacker once argued, the reason the common man in the streets isn't going to see plays is because they're inaccessible and bloody expensive. Charging 500+ dollars per seat isn't going to do much to change that.

But well, we can't really change that sort of decision, can we? So for now I'll just say I look forward to the movie version.

Anyhow, let's proceed now with the nitty-gritty.

Spoilers ahead!

While I did enjoy it, I do feel that the 8th Harry Potter story is the weakest entry of the eight Harry Potter stories.

Let's talk about why that is.

1) Time Turners.

Patrick Rothfuss once remarked that the problem with introducing Time Turners into a fictional world was that one would have to examine the consequences of their existence beyond Hermione being able to take some extra classes. And you know, Mr. Rothfuss sort of has Rowling there. If you can travel back in time reliably, then why don't you do that? Why didn't someone just hit the Time Turner the moment Snape killed Dumbledore or what have you? And if there are big anti-time travel laws in place by the Ministry, why the hell did they make an exception for a 14 year old girl?

I always had Time Turners down as a Prisoner of Azkaban-only gimmick. Something cute for that book only that you weren't meant to think about too much. So it was much to my surprise to find them featuring centrally in Cursed Child. And let's be honest here: Time Turners cause way too many plot holes.

Let's take a point from the end. There's the whole thing with Albus and Scorpius being stuck in the past while Harry and company have a Time Turner but don't know what date to point it to. Everyone's tense and trying to figure something out, until we get the nice sentimental moment where Harry finds the secret message from Albus on Lily's pillow... the whole audience is in tears as the message from son to father carries through the legacy of a dead mother, until one stray thought comes into your mind...

Why don't they go back in time to the hour before Albus and Scorpius broke into the Ministry to steal the first Time Turner and beat the everloving shit out of both the goddamn brats?

Yep. I know. It stings.

Look, I get it. I've seen those episodes of Star Trek too and know you're just supposed to ignore that kind of reasoning. But Time Turners are more than just a gimmick to save the day in this story, as they were in Prisoner of Azkaban. You didn't need to care about Time Turners in PoA until after the great scenes with Sirius were already done. But in this, well... the spotlight is on these things throughout. And when you have such a damn silly thing driving your plot, you're bound to hit that wall.

2) Ass pulling.

There are two elements in the ending that felt both rushed and awkward.

First, you've got the aforementioned mommy's blanket with its secret message. If a tincture of demiguise reacts with a love potion, it will burn. Burn in such a way as to not start a fire, but rather form perfectly neat letters. And some of said tincture just so happens to be in the house over here. Also the demiguise will keep for forty years and Harry will never think to wash the blanket or accidentally spill mustard all over it.

Harry Potter is a series with literal magic solutions to everything, but with the umpteen million ways that you can send secret messages in this world, THAT is what Rowling came up with? Come on, Ms. Rowling, you can watch better Star Trek episodes than that.

Second, there's Draco's second Time Turner.

We now know that Lucius Malfoy had a perfect time travel device in his back pocket. So when Dobby was freed, he could have just gone back in time and... no wait, let's not go down that road again.

What we do know now is that Draco apparently had a game changing magical item in his possession that he chose to simply leave in a trunk somewhere until the most dramatically appropriate moment. If there were at least a hint that Draco had one of those before that moment, I would be alright with it. But there wasn't. The plot required him to have it at that moment and so he had it.

3) Delphi.

It's strange that the most fascinating thing about the play is also the aspect I found to be most disappointing.

The daughter of Voldemort plays a really cool role in the first two thirds of the play. A manipulator/instigator who never gets her hands dirty... she's presented as a love interest for Albus, or even as the Hermione to Albus and Severus' Harry and Ron. But she came across as being perfectly likable and her mysteriously being kept away from Hogwarts gave her a certain foreign and intense quality.

And so when at the end she just started flying around being evil, I couldn't help but feel let down. The fact that she is presented as acting out of a weird form of love for her absent father is not really well examined and as she gets beaten up and sent off to Azkaban, her potential feel thoroughly squandered.

As a villain, her biggest play is trying to bring back the last big bad, an action that thoroughly consigns her to a tier 2 position. As a character, her arc seems to just sort of sputter out at the end there as the good characters beat her down. Albus' attraction to her gets laughed off and that's that. Maybe JKR will make another of these things and she'll come back for a second go at it, but as it stands Delphi leaves the play looking like a weak character that tried to resurrect a dead idea and got the shit kicked out of her for doing it.

Now, does all this mean that the play was bad? By all means no. It had faults certainly, but I enjoyed reading it and reflecting upon it. But ultimately, the play does not measure up to the first seven books.