Book Thoughts: First Impressions on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
“The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”
Nine years ago, that was the end of the Harry Potter world. Until now.
If you haven't heard, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne adapted a short story of J.K. Rowling's, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, into a play. The screenplay advertises itself as, "The eighth story. Nineteen years later."
The story focuses on Albus Severus, one of Harry's children. He befriends Scorpius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy's son, and the conflict in Albus' world begins from there.
I won't attempt to review this screenplay, as it's clearly intended to be performed on a stage, not simply read as dialogue on a page. However, judging by the nature of the screenplay, it seems as if the play itself will be an epic visual journey.
The story itself jumps around, paced more quickly than any of the previous Harry Potter books, jumping through time at an almost alarming rate. The differences between the play and books are extremely noticeable: it really isn't the medium that we're used to seeing the Harry Potter world in.
After finishing the screenplay, I had very mixed feelings about Cursed Child, to put it bluntly. I enjoyed venturing back into that world; the Harry Potter world was undoubtedly a main part of my childhood, as it was to many others. However, it was as if I was looking through a blurred version of that world: so many things were different, yet it was pretending to be the same. To me, it was almost as if the screenplay itself was a piece of fanfiction that was attempting to pass itself off as the real thing. I truly appreciated the story and thoroughly enjoyed many parts of the story, but my own personal problems with the characters and plot tainted my experience as a whole.
As a reader, I found it hard to grapple with seeing a Harry Potter world that wasn't through Harry's eyes. Rowling constructed the entire wizarding world through Harry's perspective; in all seven books, we only have insight into Harry's thoughts and actions, and really only experience the entire wizarding world through him. The different perspective of the screenplay was a jolting experience, especially because I felt like the characters that were reintroduced in Cursed Child did not behave as they would have in the Harry Potter books themselves. I understand that time has passed and that as readers, we have only ever seen these characters in dire, life-threatening situations, but it was still hard for me to reconcile these two separate versions of the same characters.
(Spoilers below. Fair warning, it's mostly a rant. All opinions are my own.)
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Characters (okay, mainly my problems with them):
Throughout the entire story, Harry Potter did not seem like the Harry Potter I had come to know over the course of seven books. To that extent, neither did Ron, Hermione, or Ginny. This may be due to the fact that this is a screenplay, and instead of viewing them onstage, I read their dialogue on a page. Still, I found their characters to be lacking. Book characters are real in their own sense; readers know how they think and how they act, and the screenplay characters did not measure up. Though I loved the plot, Harry was frankly, a dick. He treated both Professor McGonnogal and Albus in a way that seemed so inauthentic to the character he had grown to be in the books. Though his struggle to have a relationship with Albus was endearing, his blindness to the entire situation seemed too unlike him for me to truly accept.
It was hard for me to imagine Harry saying to Albus that he never wished for him to be his son, no matter how much of that was said under an angry impulse. Harry later blames it on his orphan upbringing and lack of a father figure, but he still had Sirius, Lupin, Mr. Weasley, and even Dumbledore. To me, it seemed like too much of a stretch to blame Harry's own behavior on his past, especially since it openly avoids all the family he has gained. He's always been part of the Weasley's, and now he is truly officially part of the family. In the books, Harry treasured that love and never took it for granted, so it seems odd to me that he would fail to acknowledge such a huge part of his life in his screenplay character.
Speaking of the Weasleys, I felt like this was movie-Ginny in the screenplay, and not book-Ginny. And by that, I mean that movie-Ginny was really reduced to just being Harry's love interest, while book-Ginny makes a point to emphasize her fierceness, sass: all things that would be very easy for Harry, much less anyone, to fall in love with. She is a loving wife and mother, but none of the qualities that made her Ginny in the book show through.
Ron, on the other hand, was completely trivialized. He was constantly on the sidelines, which was surprising to me, since he had such a main role in the books. He runs the joke shop now, but I would like to see some backstory to that: why does he do that? Where did George go? Why did they barely mention any of the other Weasleys?
I absolutely loved seeing Hermione as the Minister of Magic, but I still think her position needed more backstory. At one point she says she doesn't want to be Cornelius Fudge, but it sounds more like a name drop than a legitimate fear, as it wasn't something she had mentioned before. This could easily be due to the nature of a screenplay rather than a book, especially with the long time jump between the movies and the books.
Despite my problems with the original Harry Potter characters' portrayal, I still enjoyed seeing them interact. It was what I had craved for since the second I put down Deathly Hallows, and though it was not what I had imagined, I still enjoyed it.
Past the non-original Harry Potter characters, I have to talk about my love for Scorpius, because that spawn of Draco is great. I fell in love with him: he was a complete dork, yet steadfast in his loyalty to Albus. Albus was generally an angst-ridden kid, not unlike Harry at times.
Okay. Delphi. I have so many questions. First of all, why the name Delphi? Why does that remind me of Percy Jackson? Why is she so obviously sketchy from the beginning? Also, when was she born? I know Jo probably has an answer up her sleeve, but I find it very hard to believe that no one in the entire Harry Potter series had known that Bellatrix was pregnant. Wouldn't Snape, at the very least? Really, wouldn't anybody who had seen her figured out that she was pregnant? I mean, she died in Deathly Hallows, but it wasn't like she was gone for periods of time (to be fair, we really never knew what Voldemort did on a day-to-day basis, other than haunt Harry's dreams).
Also, where were the rest of the characters? Rose Granger-Weasley was barely in it, and it was very hard for me to imagine that Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Harry all remained oblivious to the tension between her and Albus. The Weasley's are a huge family, there's no way that they are strangers to family drama. Harry's other children are barely in it, Teddy Lupin isn't mentioned (which is completely different than the epilogue, it was implied that he was close to both the families), and again, nobody really mentioned the other Weasleys. Why?!
Plot (I had less problems with this):
The story itself was propelling and intriguing. I loved watching Albus and Scorpius try and mess with time, despite the fact that it was one of the most stupid things that they could have ever thought up.
One of my personal favorites was the alternate universe where Voldemort had won and Harry was dead: Umbridge being back was like a personal, good old-fashioned punch to the gut. The world was terrifying, and though it was hard for me to reconcile book Snape and screenplay Snape at first, his sacrifice truly matched the character he had been in the books (I have problems with his "love" for Lily, but that's a whole different discussion). Ron and Hermione getting the dementor's kiss together was probably one of the most heartbreaking things this new Voldemort-ridden world could have possibly conjured up. I can't even imagine what that's like to see on stage (especially since it's followed by Snape basically dying. Again).
Watching the boys go back to the Triwizard Tournament and continually mess up was hard - mainly because that entire storyline already makes me emotional by itself. Seeing Cedric again was hard, and watching Albus and Scorpius letting him go was harder still.
Speaking of heartbreak, watching Harry watch his parents die again was physically painful. We made it seven books without that happening, why did that have to happen now?!
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Overall, I don't think I enjoyed my experience with Cursed Child. There were too many gaping holes that I couldn't reconcile, and as a reader, I was disappointed. The story would have benefitted from being its own book, particularly because the wizarding world is based on intricate details that worked so well from its original medium: a book. Those details are noticeably absent in the screenplay, and it was hard for me to grasp an extension onto a series that I still love, despite it being nearly ten years since the release of Deathly Hallows.
