Harry Potter Fanatics - Ontario discussion

Yes, I have already written a review for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, but it was essentially a list of everything that went wrong with the play, written alongside my reading experience. Over a year has passed, and I would like to now reflect (in a more organized way) on exactly how this play has crushed my soul.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child reads as a way to appeal to the masses. As a play, it is meant to be produced to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. There is no "official merchandise" shop, 10th anniversary DVD re-releases, or posters. As a result, the play was stuffed to the brim with the craziest of fan theories proven correct, as well the most memorable moments of the original books-- re-written to create a level of interest. It fails miserably in its attempts to make anything meaningful out of either of these.

From the very first few acts, it is clear that any sense of the beauty and closure we were given in Deathly Hallows has been shredded to bits. Just as clear is its determination to please everybody at least a little bit. This is so far-fetched from anything J.K. Rowling has ever done. She had always in the past appealed to what she believed should happen in the story (and in her own life, shocking millions of young fans when her first book post-Potter was The Casual Vacancy). She killed Sirius, Dobby, Snape, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Colin, and Dumbledore, to name a few. These deaths, while still hard to swallow, did not please us as fans, but we could still understand why they were necessary. From the Sorting Ceremony when Albus seems to ignore his own pleas for Gryffindor and instantly gets Slytherin (while we are given a quick introduction to a friendship with Scorpius as an "explanation"), it is beyond apparent that they writers are not trying to tell a good story--they just want to appeal to the masses.

I have been to Harry Potter events where we were asked to cheer for our House. Slytherin got the loudest cheer, and I understand why. According to Pottermore, the average user of the site (and hence likely a good picture of the average fan) is about a 15 to 20 year-old girl. From my own high school experiences, this group is often (not always, yet often) rebellious in some way, or at the least the members are drawn to the bad-boy/bad-girl charm. If we had not seen Albus in Deathly Hallows fearing above all else to get Slytherin, perhaps we could accept that Harry's son could end up here. However, we know that despite Harry saying it doesn't matter where he gets Sorted, Albus truly does want Gryffindor. This poor choice made very early in the script completely betrays the beauty of the original books, and it is clear that money is the only factor that led to this choice.

As the story choppily continues, jumping from one year in one time-line to the next, we really see nothing original. I feel like I need to use the phrase "things we want to want" just kept appearing in the story. For instance, we wanted to want Time Turners to be able to fix all of our problems. Now, we know that Time Turners do not actually create a new past and hence new future, but rather make sure that the correct future is fulfilled by adding elements to the past. However, this play opted for the "re-write the past" time-travel option, insulting the brilliance of the climatic Dementor scene of Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry conjures a fully corporal Patronus to save both his own life and Sirius'. However, this new "special time-turner" lets you go back to whenever you want and save anyone that has been dead for who knows how long!! Couldn't we just save everybody that way? But we knew that Harry Potter in general would be a sappy, stupid story if everyone could come back to life. (They touch on this in the last scene when they pathetically watch Harry's parents die. It is like the whole play fights to bring back the dead, only to remember at the end that that is not how magic should work; a pointless tale to bring us back to the knowledge we had before we ever read this play.) Maybe we wished Cedric had never died, but would we truly have felt Harry's pain when Voldemort returned if Cedric had lived? Would the fifth book have had any place? Similarly, do we not wish that we could get away with anything if we just had some Polyjuice Potion? But doesn't the convenience of this potion as presented in Cursed Child, a potion that normally took a month to brew and was done in a bathroom shared with the ghost of a whiny student, undervalue the struggles Hermione, Harry, and Ron went through in Chamber of Secrets just to find out if Draco knew anything about the attacks? Every struggle from the seven books is suddenly belittled, because a whiny brat wants to bring back a dead person--the ultimate UN-ACHIEVABLE thing in the Harry Potter series! Rather than feel empathy when Harry tells Albus he wishes he was not his son, I felt only disgust for the writers who could think of no greater conflict than for a child to be hated by his father. This line was their "Pass GO and collect $200" token; it destroyed my precious Harry in a sloppy attempt to create tension in a world we believed was where "All was well."

The play continues to feed into nothing but fan theories with the introduction of Delphi, the daughter of the ever-incapable-of-love Dark Lord Voldemort and his (married) mistress Bellatrix. While I cannot understand how ANYONE can accept Voldemort ever having sex, when it was revealed who Delphi really was, I couldn't care in the slightest. My reaction was something like, "Wow, Voldemort's daughter...mind-blowing.... (eye-roll)." Not only was this implausible and distasteful, but it was a pathetic way to show how unoriginal the writers were. Of course this is blurred randomly between scenes of a young Harry wetting the bed, but I was so numb to the story at those points that my anger for them couldn't even surface... it's like this stain in my mind that I just keep dabbing at but I know it will never come out. (Isn't that a great word? Stain. It perfectly describes this book... Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stain on my childhood.)

From queer-baiting to a person of colour in a lead role, to the reappearance of Snape, and Hermione becoming Minister for Magic while Ron is reduced to an egg-head, this play provides a little bit of something for everyone (and many negative reviewers, myself included, however agree that the only positive element was Scorpius. Draco became the only other decent character, and yet he was nothing like his original self)--but it is like trying to make one smoothie to drink all day for all of your meals: "Let's see... we will get a blender, add some bacon and eggs, maybe a yogurt, some coffee, a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard, some spaghetti for dinner, and a slice of cake for dessert. And blend!!"
All I can say about both this smoothie and the play is VOMITROCIOUS!

Meanwhile, while race equality was shown, feminism was completely insulted when Hermione, one of the strongest female characters in literature, is reduced to a loser teacher because she did not get married! That is beyond pathetic. How can any work strive so hard to show equality for one group while belittling women at the same time?

From some of the reviewers, it does seem that this play appealed to the masses, but within these masses are individuals. Grindelwald and Dumbledore once sacrificed Ariana's life for "The Greater Good."

My soul is Ariana's life.

I can't believe I wrote this review three years ago. At least this play won't be showing in Canada any time soon.