How ‘Harry Potter & The Cursed Child’ Restored My Faith In The Franchise

I love Harry Potter. I know my house (Ravenclaw), Patronus (St Bernard, which, if you know me, is extremely on-brand), and wand (Laurel wood with a Phoenix feather core, 13-and-three-quarter inches with supple flexibility).

For years, I’ve loved the Wizarding World franchise like Ron Weasley loved Romilda Vaine after downing a box of love potion-laced Chocolate Cauldrons. But J.K. Rowling’s recent attempts to expand the Potter universe have deteriorated into factoids that none of us – least of all the diehard fans – asked for and few of us can forget.

At first, these tidbits – generally delivered via Twitter – were charming and mildly entertaining. I’d read that Hagrid doesn’t have a Patronus (makes sense) or that Moaning Myrtle did, at some stage, have a full name (which Rowling says has nothing to do with a certain Presidential candidate), say, “Huh!” and keep right on scrolling.

Hagrid couldn’t produce a Patronus. It’s a very difficult spell. https://t.co/TRDVNvSEdR

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) 21 August 2015

But, in the months and years that followed, Rowling’s revisionism of the characters and plot of the Potter universe went from the sublime to the ridiculous. After tokenistic revelations about Dumbledore’s sexuality, among other things, it reached full-on meme status earlier this year, when Rowling decided it was time we all knew wizards and witches straight-up shit on the floor before the advent of modern plumbing systems.

Let it go, J.K. Please.

All the while, as her team failed, again and again, to confiscate her Twitter password, the Fantastic Beasts film franchise was gathering steam.

Where its first instalment was a joyful expansion of the universe we all knew and loved — a visual feast carried by Eddie Redmayne in the role of Newt Scamander — the follow-up made a complete mess of canon, casting, and plot. Having waited a year between proverbial drinks, to say I was disheartened would be an understatement.

I left the cinema after Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald utterly convinced nobody has said “no” to Rowling in a very, very long time.

Still, while we Potterheads had suffered this protracted and deeply confusing version of a Cruciatus Curse for years, when it was announced that Rowling would produce a stage sequel to the original series with Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, I was hopeful this would be the follow-up that turned it all around.

While a number of my friends eagerly pre-ordered the stage play, opting to have it download to their Kindles in the middle of the night and devouring it when they woke in the morning, I held off, hoping to recapture the excitement that came with each new instalment of the original series when I saw it for myself.

After debuting in London in July of 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened on Broadway in April of last year, before finally premiering in Melbourne in February. Months earlier, my friends and I had co-ordinated to secure tickets to tickets to the two-part play in March (an effort which was marked by severe anxiety over the fact that we were placed behind literally tens of thousands of other theatre hopefuls in the queue and we couldn’t find a credit card that worked).

From the outset, the team behind The Cursed Child has railed against spoilers, formulating an official hashtag that encourages those who see it to #keepthesecrets, so I won’t divulge anything crucial here. Suffice it to say that, whatever faith I’d lost in Harry Potter and in Rowling’s ability to dream up something genuinely magical, I found it on the stage of the Princess Theatre. I laughed. I cried. I literally screamed on more than one occasion (and was shushed by the folks seated in front of me almost as much).

Taking place 19 years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the dense, sprawling story unravels over two parts that last, cumulatively, around six hours. There are perfectly executed canonical call-backs and references to the original series, Easter eggs so subtle they reveal themselves to you at 3am, weeks after the fact, and additions to the cast and plot that are both exciting and, more importantly, thoughtful and considered.

Who’d have thought Moaning Myrtle, who plays a comparably small role in Cursed Child, could absolutely steal the few scenes in which she appears, or that Draco Malfoy – one of the franchise’s most reliable villains – could deliver what is arguably the play’s most heart-warming moment?

While I breathed a sigh of relief that the Potter universe is in safe hands after all, nothing could have prepared me for the production quality of Cursed Child. There’s water and flames and disappearing people (and reappearing people!) and actual actors inexplicably transforming into other actors before your very eyes.

On top of all that, a full renovation of the Melbourne theatre has seen the Hogwart’s ‘H’ embedded into everything from the carpet to the wallpaper and a swift merchandise changeover between parts one and two sees the audience carry a pivotal plot moment with them outside the theatre and into excitable dinner conversations down the road.

It’s an experience so immersive, so meticulously detailed that I hadn’t yet extracted myself from it by the time I fronted up for work in Sydney on the following Monday morning.

All told, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child more than lives up to the hype – it absolutely obliterates (or, should I say, obliviates) it. There’s no other way to describe it – it’s magic.

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(Images: Matthew Murphy / The Australian Company of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child)