Harry Potter and the Cursed Child First Thoughts

I’m not really one for book reviews these days, I tried to do them but found it impossible to do them spoiler free. So I’m going to say now, this is NOT SPOILER FREE, so if you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child yet, don’t read on any further because I’ll end up ruining it for you. This is my personal opinions and thoughts on the latest (and apparently last) instalment of the Harry Potter saga.

As an introduction I’m going to give you a few bits of information. Firstly, I studied drama at university, I am very familiar with play scripts, both how to read them, how to use them in performance and how to dissect them to write an essay. I have read many plays so any negative comments I have are not because I don’t understand how a script works.

Secondly, I have been a Harry Potter fan since I was 12 years old. My sister was given Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before any of the hype and I read it because the cover looked cool. I went to many midnight releases for the books, I was an avid member of both a Harry Potter forum and inspired chat site and I even skipped school to go see Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone at the cinema when I was 13. I am a Harry Potter fan, I was of that generation and without those seven books I wouldn’t be who I am today. Even now I’d still say I am Harry Potter fan, I enjoyed the Studio Tour and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as an adult, I read all the books while pregnant with Little Miss and I look forward to the day that I can share JK Rowling’s magical world with her.

When reading my thoughts, please keep these two pieces of information in mind.

I was away for my boyfriend’s birthday in the Peak District the day The Cursed Child was released so I didn’t manage to pick it up until the following Thursday (and I’m glad I waited because I got it for half off!) but I read the whole thing in just over three hours. This isn’t unheard of, I have sat and read a lot of the previous instalments of Harry Potter in one sitting, including Order of Phoenix when I stayed up all night to read it. But this time it wasn’t because I was so absorbed I couldn’t put it down, sadly this time it was because I wanted it to be over.

Lets start with my thoughts of it as a play. I feel sad having read it that I didn’t get tickets to see it because I do think it’s going to be a truly spectacular play. The stage directions seemed amazing and I could see how I expected it to work in my head. I think it’s going to be an amazing piece of theatre that incorporates all the senses to give you a sense of involvement not just something you sit in the theatre and watch. It’s going to a spectacle without a doubt, and I think it will be worth every penny. That being said, I feel sad it’s under the Harry Potter umbrella, because even though I imagine it’s an amazing play to see, it’s just not Harry Potter to me. Nothing about it apart from the familiar names, places, and magical objects and creatures screams Harry Potter to me.

For me, it was unnecessary.

I still stand by the fact that the final chapter in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was unnecessary, and this is a complete continuation of that. I finished it feeling sad and disappointed that it was even a thing. What annoyed me most were the characters. Not the new characters, but the old ones. I know it’s 19 years later but there was none of JK Rowling’s character development. Ron was just annoying, Harry and Ginny pathetic but I was most disappointed in Draco Malfoy but that was because his character completely changed over the course of the play! Not just changed from how he was in the previous seven instalments (which was bad enough). I understand that the characters need to be open to interpretation, but surely with these characters being so beloved by so many you do need to keep some of their character in there. Harry Potter is disappointing. He’s not the Harry Potter I grew up with. In fact, none of this wizarding world was what I grew up with. I just felt the whole play was missing the magic.

Now onto the the newer aspects. I’m fairly sure this wasn’t how time travel worked in the other books.. Surely much smarter wizards would have been using time travel to change things for years if you could just “build” a time turner? It just felt too convenient, I just had so many issues with that element of the play. I also feel like the jumping around, and the dream elements weren’t best described in the book. On stage maybe they’ll accomplish this better, but as a Harry Potter fan reading this, I needed more.

Although I said it wasn’t what I was annoyed at most, I did have some kind of annoyance at the characters. I felt Scorpius and Albus could have had so much more potential. They set them up that maybe one of them could have feelings for the other, more than friendship.. but then they both had interest in girls. I felt like it was a cop out. I would have more respect if the play write had explored a homosexual couple. It even felt like it could have been in the original write from the way the characters were developing but was changed and that change didn’t feel as natural. Through most of the book I couldn’t stand Albus, I thought he was a brat but I do understand that is how the audience was supposed to feel. It made sense, he was the middle child, it happens but the way both Ginny and Harry reacted to him felt forced and Harry was just all over the place. Scorpius I liked a lot more, even from the very beginning. Rose Granger-Weasley though was not a likeable character, but then again I can’t say I liked Ron or Hermione in The Cursed Child.

Lets look at Delphi as a character. As soon as she arrived on the scene I didn’t like her. She always seemed to be there, she targeted Albus from the word go and he was too stupid to see. She’s described as in her 20s, what does a woman in her 20s look like hanging around two boys in their early teens. Of course that meant I wasn’t surprised when she was revealed as Voldemort’s daughter. The prophecy was a little disappointing too, it had not as much affect as the ones from the books in the series. Of course I liked that Voldemort had a daughter and not a son, women can just be as terrifying and as powerful as men. However I didn’t like how it was Bellatrix’s daughter, again, just too easy and thus disappointing. I always loved Rowling for not being predictable (aside from Ginny and Harry). She didn’t have the villain factor for me and reminded me a lot of a Veela rather than anything else.

I did love that “The Cursed Child” is very ambiguous and could be applied to few characters in the play (much like the speculation of “Who is the Half Blood Prince?” that you had throughout much of the 6th book). In a flashback Petunia calls Harry cursed, then there is Albus who feels it’s a curse to be the son of Harry Potter and a Slytherin, and of course Scorpius who struggles being a Malfoy and with the fact he is bullied for the rumour that he is Voldemort’s son. Then we have Delphi who is the daughter of Voldemort, who of course she feels is a blessing but everyone else feels is a curse. You could even go obscure and apply it to Cedric Diggory, who lost his life for being a spare, but also his death is the main crux of this story. I love that even by the end you aren’t sure who the title belongs to, where as it’s solved in the Half Blood Prince.

Speaking of the Half Blood Prince, I did feel like it was a nice touch with Snape and that was the only bit I cried at when he sacrificed himself so Scorpius could fix his mistake.

Over all, I finished reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child feeling very sad and disappointed. Yes, it’s written well for a theatre production but as a Harry Potter instalment I just feel like it’s an unneeded addition to the saga. If this had been a play not under the Harry Potter name with a few changes, it would be amazing. But I just feel that a play about Harry Potter’s children is like flaying an already dead horse. Now if this had been anything about the Marauders.. I’d have been all over it.