With any sequel that extends beyond the reaches of a franchise’s original storyline, you run the risk of spoiling the crystallized image of the world left behind. And for Harry Potter fans, the world of the seven-book series is a damn near perfect one.
Yet the thirst for a continuation to the Potter story has been ever-present since the release of the seventh book in 2007. So what’s the middle ground between the two?
J.K. Rowling’s answer to that predicament is to turn a would-be eighth book into a play: the ominously titled “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” now playing at London’s West End and released as a hardcover script—with typical midnight release fanfare—on July 31.
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“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is not actually written by Rowling, but rather based off a storyline by her, director John Tiffany and writer Jack Thorne (who also penned the script). It follows the early Hogwarts career of Albus Severus Potter, Harry’s difficult middle child and the eponymous cursed child.
The play picks up where “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” left off—King’s Cross Station, 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. This kind of beginning is a tough hurdle to climb. Because it needs to provide momentum, the first scene loses a lot of the sweet finality it carried as the original epilogue. Instead of an emotional farewell, it’s now exposition—it opens at the close.
From there, the storyline ramps up and runs a 308-page sprint to the finish line. “Fast-paced” is an easy word to use to describe plot, but that’s exactly what this one is—barely pausing to catch a breath, accelerating way beyond the reaches of the places I expected it to go. It’s difficult to articulate without spoiling anything (#KeepTheSecrets), but suffice it to say that you won’t see the crux of the story coming.
Obviously, reading a play is quite a different experience than reading a novel, and you get the sense that some of the script can’t fully be fathomed without seeing it staged. Unlike the book series, in which imagination is free to roam pretty much as the reader pleases, the hyperspecific stage directions of the play leave you somewhat limited and grasping for a certain kind of mental picture.
There are highs and lows throughout the script; sometimes both at the same time. It indulges in definitive reader wish fulfillment in a way that only narrowly avoids feeling cheap. You’ll notice it, you’ll cringe a little, but it still might manage to make you cry.
That’s the ultimate push-and-shove for Potter fans: How much is too much? You could argue, of course, that Rowling is milking the franchise dry. Certainly many people feel that way, and I think even the most loyal of HP devotees roll their eyes a bit when she unloads each new set of post-facto info on Pottermore.
But somehow, it’s still irresistible. I thought I had outgrown that breathless, Christmas Eve-type of excitement—the kind you only really get as a kid, the anticipation of something purely wonderful. And yet it hit me full force while standing in line for the play’s midnight release, surrounded by generation upon generation of Potter fans. From young to old, we were all there for that feeling.
Don’t pick up “Cursed Child” expecting it to be perfect in any objective sense of the word. But I have a suspicion that if you’re a lifelong fan, it won’t matter to you either way. That’s the real magic of “Harry Potter.”
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
by J.K. Rowling
3.5 stars