I’m continuing our week of Harry Potter love with the play sequel Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Unlike the original books, this was not a reread for me. In fact, I had been resisting reading it ever since its release because I really don’t enjoy the play script format and didn’t think I could get past it.
And to be totally honest, I was a little bit nervous that somehow the play would change the way I felt about the original story or the characters. Is that dumb? When I really love a book – when you fall in love with the world and the characters – I don’t want a written-much-later sequel (or prequel) to change what I love about them. So, in one sense, I was excited to read Cursed Child because I wasn’t quite ready to leave Hogwarts after this last read-through. On the other hand, though, I was cautious going into it because I didn’t want to read Ron, Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and others out of character. I wanted it to feel like I was reading an extension of the Harry Potter I know, not something totally new and foreign.
All in all, none of my fears came true. Cursed Child began almost identically to the Deathly Hallows epilogue, which immediately gave me comfort. While the play focuses primarily on Harry and Ginny’s second son Albus Severus and his friend – Draco Malfoy’s son – Scorpius, it had more involvement of the adults (a.k.a our favorite trio) than I expected. That was a very pleasant surprise! Naturally, a lot of time has passed since Deathly Hallows, so the adults are different in some ways, but they do maintain their personalities. I very much enjoyed watching their interactions as adult friends, in their careers, and as married couples (give me all the romance, please! I maintain I could’ve used more of that in the original series…).
As for the main characters themselves – Albus and Scorpius – I found Albus a little bit hard to relate to. With less development and description than a book, the play just didn’t give me enough about Albus to really feel invested in him. I liked Scorpius quite a bit, but the same feeling applied. As I read, all I could keep thinking was, “I wish this was just another 500 page book!” I needed more of, well, everything! More background. More description of character, setting, and action. More of Albus’ and Harry’s history. More of Harry + Ginny, and Ron + Hermione, and their family lives. More of the Draco + Harry dynamic. More of Draco’s life (including his wife). More between Scorpius and Rose. And always more Hogwarts and different aspects of it (including a more in-depth look at Slytherin house as opposed to Gryffindor in the main series). The play gave me only a taste of each of these things as it moved the action along with primarily dialogue via the script, leaving me craving more information. The plot was interesting, and the characters were there; I just wanted it thoroughly fleshed out.
Despite my qualms about reading a play script versus a book, it wasn’t that bad, and I found myself less distracted by the format than I thought I would be. I liked the newness of what the play explored, while still connecting back to the familiarity of Harry’s life and story. I do hope they manage to adapt the play into a movie, and using the original cast would be absolutely delightful. I think it could be fantastic onscreen if done properly and tied well into the Harry Potter films. All that said – I am glad I finally read Cursed Child and would recommend it to fellow Harry Potter fans!
Jessica
Copyright J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany. Image from Amazon.com.
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