Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: The ultimate encore to the Harry Potter franchise.
The play officially premiered at London’s Palace Theatre on July 30, 2016. Even the release date holds significance for fans, the 31st being the birthday of both Harry Potter and JK Rowling. Cursed Child begins 19 years after the defeat of Voldemort, continuing on from the epilogue of Deathly Hallows. An aged Harry Potter walks his son, Albus, through King’s Cross station for his first year at Hogwarts.
Sam Clemmett’s Albus resents his father’s celebrity, finding solace in an unlikely friendship with Scorpius Malfoy. Both boys repute the roles of their fathers in society; Potter seen as the hero and Malfoy the villain. The pivotal idea of breaking or following a parent’s legacy informs the entire play, finding an identity in the darkness of another’s shadow. Albus and Severus seek to discover their purpose while feelings inadequacy and failure distance them from others, such as many teenagers experience.
As you enter London’s Palace Theatre, the industrial iron-wrought arches and looming clock face of the stage transport you to King’s Cross. With the unique influence of both infamous books and movies, Cursed Child relies on music and choreographed movement to set it apart from Rowling previous works. As a diagnosed ‘Potterhead’, seeing another instalment of the potter-verse in a new medium was thrilling and something I thought I’d never see.
Although director John Tiffany and ‘magician’ Jamie Harrison work seamlessly to create the simple yet stunning effects on stage, the child-like wonderment they elicit cannot compare to the roaring spectacles of the big screen. However, by isolating Cursed Child as simply the fiction of three fan’s imagination, it is beautiful. You again become enraptured in the universe, feeling closer to Rowling’s world than ever before.
Jamie Harrison has truly performed the impossible, bringing wizardry to the stage of Palace Theatre. For those who grew up with Harry Potter, it evokes nostalgia and the naivety of our childhoods. As Horace Slughorn would say, it is simply wondrous to behold. The Ministry is imbued with a new sense of enchantment as the characters are sucked into an impossibly small opening in a swirl of black billowing cloaks. The unobtrusive nature of the hat-trick was shocking and completely unexpected.
The last instalment of Harry Potter felt as if I was mourning the untimely death of a part of myself that I did not want to let go. I felt I had been shaped by this world and refused to let my memories of it decay. Cursed Child felt like a spark and I was overcome with emotion, revisiting that pivotal time in my life when Harry Potter influenced me most.
The official script book of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts I & II: Available on Amazon
Tickets: 0330 333 4813, harrypottertheplay.com. Currently sold out but 40 tickets are made available for the following week every friday
By Natasha Jarrett, Orleans Park School
