Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

 2022, d.  - theatrical performance (June 19, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto)

Let's just get this out of the way off the top...I like Harry Potter ok. I'm not the hugest of fans, but I do generally like the film series and think they were quite an achievement.  I found the books started feeling unnecessarily bloated around the fourth and gave up on reading them.  I vehemently detest J.K. Rowling's outspoken anti-trans stance, and find that for someone who talks a lot in her stories about acceptance, that she seems painfully unaware of how close-minded and proactively hurtful she has become.  I wish to, as much as possible, distance my assessment of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from the ugliness of its creator, separate the art from the artist, as a lot of other artists had a hand in this production than just Rowling (is it fair to wish that the property were owned by some faceless corporation, like how Disney has control of Star Wars now?)

I was lucky enough to have a friend who is working on the show and graced me with tickets to the opening day performance, lucky in the sense that tickets are hard to get generally, and that I didn't have to pay for them.  

I'm not a regular theatre goer, but I've seen a number of different productions in Toronto (and even a couple on Broadway).  This was, far and away, the biggest, most elaborate, most technically complex production I've seen.  The theme of the show, through and through, is magic, and it's everywhere within the production.  It's not just the pyrotechnics emanating from the wands, or the clever trap door-aided physical transformation scenes, or the slight of hand tricks where one part of the set becomes a complete other set without you noticing the act of transformation.  It's everywhere.  I remember a performance of Les Miserables with a transforming set, but that's just it's transition from one act's backdrop to another.  This show's sets seem so simplistic and yet they are constantly move right before your eyes without calling attention to themselves.  Sometimes it's just a trick of the lighting, sometimes it's the ancillary players using the props as one thing, but them becoming another thing as the scene goes on (suitcases play multiple parts throughout the performance).  

While there are no songs -- it's not a musical -- there are dance numbers, and the dances are quite incredible.  They use props, wardrobes, and the various tricks of the sets and stage to create a dazzling display that serves the dual purpose both of visually arresting choreography but also in obfuscating the set transitions.  You only kind of notice the end result when they exit the stage, to see that it's been completely redressed during their dance.  The dancing is very contemporary, but also so specific to its dual purpose.  It's "in world" in terms of the people and their movements and the accessories being used, and, except maybe the first time, it never feels shoehorned in... there's an organicness to it.  Other scenes change as a result of passing time (an anti-montage if you will) which involves the cast on stage moving slowly and jerkily to not-quite-strobe lighting cues that make it seem like time is acting erratically.  Part of the plot also involves time travel, and they've devised an exceptionally clever lighting effect to show when a journey has completed, on top of the clock motifs embedded into the set that are equally highlighted by different lighting.

The stage features rotating pieces, trap doors, treadmills, all which are used in both obvious and obtuse ways.  Characters will walk decently paced while basically existing in same spot, while the curving part of the stage provides movement to pieces around them that give the illusion that the performer is moving closer or further away.  It's so well done, and so subtle, that unless you start to look for it you don't even see it.

Wire work also has a heavy role to play in this, and there are performers being swung around the stage, and in one instance over the audience (still not sure if it was a performer, an animatronic, or just a trick of light and wind), but it's again, always disguised how the performer, previously untetherd, suddenly is up in the air (or whether it's the performer or something else, swapped out through a trap door).

I was just in awe of this production purely on a technical level.  It's dazzling, and certainly exceptionally well thought through.  No movement is wasted, and every piece of the set seems to have been optimized for maximum functionality.  And it all looks magnificent.

Now it's all in service of the story, an original creation from Rowling, with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany also getting story credit.   It's steeped in the lore of the previous Harry Potter septology, but basically fits as a legasequel, in which the primary characters are children of the lead characters of the previous series, but the parents also play a part.  As well, in legasequel style, the kids are dealing with ripples that remain from the previous endeavour. 

In this case our leads are Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, the former the younger child of Harry and Ginny, the latter the son of Harry's childhood rival, Draco.  Albus is awkward and anxious, he feels the weight of his father's legacy on him in a way his brother, James, somehow ignored.  He's unsure how to live up to the expectations he thinks are upon him, and it builds up anger and resentment towards his father within him.  Scorpius, meanwhile, is a nervous twitch of a boy who is super smart but also super awkward.  The horrible, unfounded rumour is that his parents used a Time Turner to go back in time and that he's the offspring of his mother and Voldemort.  In an absolutely clever and well done on-stage montage, we traverse two years of the boys' lives at Hogwarts (and inbetween) in less than 10 mintues of stage time which serves both to solidify their connection to each other, as well as the awkwardness between Albus and Harry.

The crux of the story is a bit of a shoehorn, as a wedged-in scene finds Cedric Diggory's father (the boy played by Robert Pattinson in The Goblet of Fire) implores Harry to use a Time Turner to go back in time and save his boy.  Harry, now Mister of Defense or somesuch, denies the existence of any Time Turners and refuses the old man's pleas.  However, a skulking Albus is aware that Harry recently discovered a Time Turner in a raid.  Albus and Scorpius, escaping their train to year 3 at Hogwarts, set out to steal the Time Turner and set right what Harry could, or would not.  Of course, these two awkward boys and their Time Travel shenanigans make a real mess of things and things get real bad.  

The plot weaves in and out of events of The Goblet of Fire, but uses its story to be one about fathers.  Harry feels like a failure as a father to Albus, a boy he doesn't try to understand, but then admits that without having a father himself, he doesn't have anyone to measure himself against.  Scorpius, having recently lost his mother to disease, senses distance between his father and himself, distance which Draco admits to not wanting but not understanding how to correct.  Harry's father figure, Dumbledor, makes appearances as a moving speaking portait (an excellent effect of lighting) and calls the old man out for his coldness.  James Potter, the father Harry never knew, is a bit of a shadow, until he is not.  And there's even another father who plays a role in the proceedings, but that's a spoiler.  And of course, there's Cedric Diggory's grieving father, who has seemingly withered away in his despair over the years.

Being that this production's opening day was on Father's Day, it was a rather fitting day to catch it, and the impact seemed even greater as a result.  I think it's the strength of the story.  The stupid boys doing stupid time travel things without thinking through the consequences seemed an exercise to get some fan favourite characters into the proceedings as well as drag the story through a number of familiar cues.  There are some surprises, but it all felt a little fan-servicey and it gets a bit Back to the Future Part 2 at times.

The all-Canadian(?) cast were all quite good, with only Scorpius performer Thomas Mitchell Barnet and Katie Ryerson's Moaning Myrtle really standing out for giving bigger, broader performances.  Everyone else was giving apt energy.  I think Draco Malfoy performer Brad Hodder did a good job, but it's more the character than the performer that gets the best speeches in the production, in part because of considering who the words are coming from. The accents are all "stage British", and sound as such, fading in and out a bit throughout.  It's all fine to my Canadian ears.  Actual Brits may feel differently.

The heavy insinuation by the end is that Albus and Scorpius are in love with each other, but the story never goes beyond inference.  It seems to be explicitly written in a way to allow for plausible deniability that they're just bestest friends ever and that the "love" they speak of for each other is just that.  It's Rowling's late-stage, out-of-story admission that Dumbledor was gay all over again, just cowardly. The boys share a hug or two but there's no kiss, which seems regressive.  I'm sure the production doesn't want the interruption of hate-filled homophobes standing up and disrupting the whole play but they easily could have devised it so that the show ends with their kiss which then goes to curtains and fanfare reception, drowning out the haters.  Fuck the haters.

Which brings us back to where we started. Rowling. A hater. Its obvious that this is a successful production but I have to say in the back of my brain I couldn't shut off the notion that there would be some form of anti-trans subliminal messaging somewhere in all this.  There isn't, and I admit it is paranoid thinking that there would be.  I'm sure it's something neither Thorne nor Tiffany would allow, but how does one condemn the artist and still condone their art.  If you support the art, you're therefore supporting the artist, are you not?  I can't in conscience tell people to pay to go see this production, but I can't really say it's not something worth seeing either.   The story, the name of Harry Potter is the draw, but the real art of it all come from set designer Christine Jones, costume designer Katrina Lindsay, movement director Steven Hoggett, composer and arranger Imogen Heap (it's a great score), lighting designer Neil Austin, sound designer Gareth Fry, illusions and magic from Jamie Harrison and all the other great artists involved.  Everyone else polished it up and brought it to life, all Rowling did was build the world and the characters and story (I know, it is a mighty achievement and I'm really falsely underplaying it... I just wish she weren't such a TERF).