Cursed Child cuts five hours to three, and the magic holds
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been turned from a two-part play into a one-part production, ten years after it first opened in the West End. A similar version is already running to acclaim on Broadway, the Guardian reported, but reworking a show that had come to feel like a fixed West End jewel still felt risky. The risk has paid off, and the play has not lost its sparkle.
There are drawbacks to cutting Jack Thorne’s five-hour script to a tightly packed three hours. The plot can at times overwhelm. The story picks up nearly 20 years after JK Rowling’s final book and follows Harry’s youngest son, Albus, newly arrived at Hogwarts and set on making a name apart from his famous father. When Albus and his best friend Scorpius Malfoy find a time-turner, the two unleash dark forces. It takes an incredibly complicated plot twist, which the reviewer suspects only Thorne himself understands, to save the day. Even with a streamlined script, with key characters cut and dream sequences dropped, the story can get in the way of John Tiffany’s production.
But the places that story goes: boys swimming through shimmering lakes, frightened adults sliding through flaming fireplaces, transporting telephone boxes, transformation spells, exploding sweets, glowing wands, and terrifying dementors that loom and whoosh through the stalls.
Steven Hoggett’s movement direction runs through it all, keeping the production moving and building mystery at every turn. The large ensemble moves as one, sweeping their cloaks with precision. It plays out on Christine Jones’s simple but stunning set, with huge arches and open dark spaces that hint at bigger powers just out of sight.
The visual spectacle is matched by fine performances, the best of them laced with humour. At the show the reviewer saw, Albus was played by understudy Ewan Rutherford, with a flinty defiance. Bill Stanley, on his West End debut, was especially good as Scorpius, voice always on the verge of breaking, frightened of everything and braver for it. David Ricardo-Pearce’s Harry is weighed down with responsibility, Thomas Aldridge’s Ron is funny but a little sad, and Naana Agyei-Ampadu’s Hermione is commanding but vulnerable.
It is a great cast, and in a celebrity-packed West End there is not a superstar in sight. The real star, with credit to illusionist Jamie Harrison, is the magic the audience comes to believe in together: the talking portrait, the dancing stairs, the man who flies and the boy who lives.
