Last week, the theatre world and the Potterverse joined forces to go into a collective tizzy following the announcement that the latest instalment in the Harry Potter story would be a play, adapted for stage by Skins and This Is England writer Jack Thorne. The details are sketchy so far. We know that it will take the form of two parts, will open in July 2016, will have music from Imogen Heap, will feature Harry Potter as a grown up Ministry of Magic employee with three kids, and will involve Secrets From The Past.
But beyond that, there’s only fog and mystery. So we’ve peered through the dense mists of time to bring you the first reviews of this stage extravaganza. Pop some Imogen Heap on, and imagine you’re already there…
Rafaella Marcus: ALL THE FEELS
There are few things more exciting than witnessing the democratisation of theatre in action. As is now infamously the case, it is a commendable move on the part of Rowling to embargo reviews from the mainstream press and allow critical discourse only to take place via Twitter or Tumblr. (Exeunt is proud never to have counted itself amongst the mainstream press.) Reports have circulated of Billington turning up to press night in bewilderment, repeating his name at box office, whilst crowds of ‘Harry is my Homeboy’ be-t-shirted millennials swarm past; Lyn Gardner barely audible over the clank of Deathly Hallows jewellery and speech conducted either entirely in capital letters or with no punctuation or upper case letters at all.
Like many a reviewer who hit wizarding age alongside the eponymous Harry, I too greeted the announcement of a theatrical extension of the series with a certain degree of trepidation. I need not have worried. I write this picking the dirt out from under my fingernails where I have excavated it from the shallow grave wherein I buried my obsessive Potter love in the late noughties, having muttered words of necromantic magic over the corpse, and welcomed it, Frankenstein-like, back to life with a tender embrace.
Rowling, Thorne and Tiffany have created a bold and moving spectacle, a piece that locates its heart in the probing of the creation, fracturing and repairing of the family unit, which is – after all – what Harry Potter has always been about. It is impossible to choose a particular moment of quiet magic above the rest: the only-for-the-adults references to Harry and Ginny slipping off to relationship counselling, the brief but warmly welcomed reappearance of fan favourite Luna Lovegood, or the simple admission that, in naming his child Albus Severus, it was Harry who had created the real curse all along.
Ultimately, I can only echo the rallying cry that accompanied this evening’s standing ovation: ALL THE FEELS YOU GUYS
All the feels, indeed.
Stewart Pringle: NSFW. Definitely Not Suitable For Children. Probably Not Suitable For Anyone.
Who’d have guessed it? After years of building a career with painstaking care and intelligence, crafting some of the most memorable plays and television of recent years, including a storming adaptation of Let the Right One In and one of the most sensitive explorations of disability and sexuality to date, Jack Thorne blows it all in an exercise of perversion and obscenity that knows no bounds or reason.
When Thorne’s two-part Potter epic was announced, it’s far to say it was expected that the acclaimed writer would take his inspiration from J K Rowling’s own words, not what can only be described as reams of sexually explicit internet fan-fiction. Thorne’s “slash” approach to a return to the Wizarding World is barely more than one carnal coupling after another. The opening scene of Hagrid vigorously tupping a Goblin from Gringots is just about acceptable as a piece of cheeky table-turning from a (relatively) young dramatist out to flip some expectations and give the West End a shake-up, but the sheer relentlessness with which rogering follows rogering, with three solid hours of sucking and fucking in each part, played without interval is, frankly, a bit much. Nobody needs to see a middle-aged Ron’s pasty arse pistoning back and forth for what must be twenty sweaty minutes. On a revolve.
Nobody needs to see whichever Weasley twin it was that didn’t snuff it practising self-fellatio with the aid of a rib-removing charm. The ghostly aerial ballet between (loudly) Moaning Myrtle and Bellatrix Lestrange? Could have done without it.
In a Guardian interview yesterday Matt Trueman quizzed Thorne on one of the bigger mysteries this throws up, what in God’s name is the title referring to? Who is the Cursed Child? Thorne, transparent at least on this, simply replied ‘They wouldn’t let us put ‘Harry Potter and His Friends Fuck Each Other to Death’ on a poster. Or not without an asterisk, anyway.’
Dave Ralf: A Black Box Staging Exceeds Expectations
The Quick-Quotes Quills have been scribbling, as almost every West End Rita Skeeter in town has come up with a reason to break the press embargo and give their take on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part One – to be the first to give it five points to Gryffindor, or declare it, after all, a damp Squib.
As we learned back in February, the proposed two-part extension to the franchise has swollen (Engorgio!) to a proposed six-part behemoth. By this time in 2019, each of the six Nimax theatres will have a Potter play, and it will be possible for true fans to watch each part of the franchise over the course of a week, or – for tourists uninterested in the capital’s other attractions – in three days, matinees and afternoons.
So what all these Wizarding Weeklys have been reviewing is, after all, nothing more than a prologue, and one is reluctant to judge this new strand of the Potter mythos too soon. After all, the leaked Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Part one of three!) footage has been judged all too quickly, all too harshly, as the media seeks to churn out copy to delight hungry fans. After a press release was greeted with groans The House Elf’s Very Own Sock, with illustrations by Nick Sharatt, was a surprise Christmas hit and an instant children’s classic. So why would this reviewer dare judge the glory of Hogwarts on the basis of what is – ultimately – the inside of the cupboard under the stairs?
Nevertheless, the decision to feature no flying, no Mary Poppins-like stagecraft, and crucially, no Great British Actors of note, sets Part One apart from the films (a new film reboot of the book series is tipped to appear as early as 2018). Despite the paternalistic outrage of those who decry the supposed lack of visible excess onstage – something few fans on Tumblr that actually bought £50 preview tickets have complained about – something rather wonderful (I shan’t say magical) emerges when 30-odd Hogwarts students recreate the exploits of the famous Harry Potter – with old-fashioned Muggle storytelling. Sometimes the Room of Requirement is a black box, and it is all you need.
Alice Saville: A Baffling Immersive Experience
Escaping out of the theatre, I heard a flash and a cry of “Obliviate!” The paparazzi are out in full force, and their rudeness to mere critics gets more egregious with every passing year. But perhaps as a result of the three Butterbeers I enjoyed during the long queue for press entry, I’ll readily admit my memories of last night’s immersive Potterverse experience are few, and hazy. Some vignettes:
-Sitting in a circle on grey carpeted floor, being led through mindfulness exercises with a therapist wearing a pink fluffy cardigan, black velvet hair-bow and a gimlet expression. A harassed middle-aged man with broken glasses (a senior civil servant, apparently) kept rubbing his forehead as though it burned, and making a break for the exit, but was brought down by a well-aimed Chi Ball.
-A long and tedious display of laminated posters explaining the importance of purity in magic, and the dangers of werewolves and merpeople.
-A frightened group of children dressed as Hogwarts students, singing an incomprehensible song about the importance of negotiating with (magical?) terrorists.
-Attempting to find another set of toilets (the upstairs ones were flooded) I headed down a blocked staircase and glimpsed a series of astonishingly lifelike animatronic dragons and other strange beasts, tied up in rusty chains. Then a thick black hood was tied round my head and I was led swiftly to the exit.
In this post-Punchdrunk era the lines between a theatrical experience and an acid trip on the third floor of Ikea get blurrier every year. But I take umbrage at a performance that featured next to no theatrical magic, and seemed like an exercise in crowd control by a power-crazed director in a pink power suit and Thatcherite perm. The only scrap of subversion came from a small pamphlet called “The Quibbler” tucked into my pocket: from the garbled hysteria contained within, it sounds like an Equity investigation might be well overdue.
Andrew Haydon: The Realist’s Take
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the most-talked-about, sold-out show since Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet. The difference is, of course, that no one was all that curious about what happens in Hamlet. Here, the play really is the thing. Indeed, since the casting of Mark Rylance as grown-up Harry, with the ever-excellent Anastasia Hille (or is it Lia Williams?) as his wife Ginny, everything else has felt reassuringly certain. And so it proves.John ‘Once’ Tiffany’s direction is Black Watch assured, and Stephen ‘Curious Incident’ Hoggart’s movement direction is The Dog in the Night Time it always is (which is to say; *not my thing*), but it works well enough here. And so to Jack Thorne’s script…
Having spent over a decade killing his characters’ children in miscarriages, investigating the inner lives of rapists, rape victims and paedophiles, also delving into the later life of child murderer Mary Bell on stage, eyebrows *may* have raised over the possible new directions that the life of this adult Harry Potter might take.
No one need have worried, of course. Thorne throws together a more-than acceptable, enjoyable romp through the familiar worlds of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic. Yes, it’s a shade grittier than the earlier books, and the grit is more personal than the political struggles of the later books, but there’s enough adventure, fluff and magic to keep everyone happy.
Adrian Scarborough is an inspired choice for comic relief as grown-up Ron Weasley (although the less said about Helena Bonham-Carter’s Hermione the better) and the new, posh-voiced children around whom this new story really revolves are all miraculously good, as ones like them were in Billy Elliot and Matilda and so on…
Ultimately, it is all perfectly nice and very well done. It’s probably not my favourite thing ever, but it’s for children, really, isn’t it? They don’t want Heiner Müller, do they? Philistines.
DISCLAIMER: Our Divination skills are Troll level, at best. Your best chance of finding out what Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will actually be like is to wait until the show’s opening in July 2016: full ticket info here.
