JK Rowling and the curse of Harry Potter's success

There are a few children but not many. Most of those who have given up consecutive evenings to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are, like me, in their twenties. There are two Kuwaiti fans who in honour of Harry have etched silver scars on their foreheads, an American girl in a “Marauder’s Map” dress who has travelled to London especially for the plays, and rows of young men in round-framed glasses. A few middle-aged men in Potter-themed t-shirts pose for photographs.

I was eight years old when the first book came out, and I retain a nostalgic fondness for JK Rowling’s stories, which I grew up reading. As always with escapist fiction, much of the fun was in the detail—collectable chocolate frog cards and butterbeer and romantic sub-plots and friends falling out and making up again—against a backdrop of dozens of well-developed minor storylines and characters. The most complex and exciting of these defied a simple distinction between good and evil; at her best Rowling sketched out flawed characters who could be cruel and heroic by turns. Her detective plots were sufficiently fleshed out to make her alternative magical world a recognisable echo of ordinary pre-teen life—with emotional and moral dilemmas played out for heightened stakes.

The latest ambitious instalment in the series is beautifully staged and contains enough surprises to keep fan-filled audiences gasping and groaning. But it offers the bare bones of a Potter novel with little flesh. Part of this is down to the sheer density of the plot, which was drawn up by Rowling and her collaborators Jack Thorne and John Tiffany in a single session. (Those who wish to avoid spoilers should stop reading here.) The plays fill two evenings and almost five hours—but the scenes often compress the events of weeks and months into just a few minutes on stage, ferrying us rapidly from one plot-point to the next. The play opens with a version of the epilogue from the seventh book, with a middle-aged Harry and Ginny (Jamie Parker and Poppy Miller) and Ron and Hermione (Paul Thornley and Noma Dumezweni) waving off their children on the Hogwarts Express. We follow Harry’s son, Albus Severus (Sam Clemmett,) as he befriends Scorpius Malfoy (Anthony Boyle,) son of Harry’s childhood rival Draco (Alex Price.) Both are struggling with the burden of their fathers’ reputations. Albus quickly comes to identify with Cedric Diggory, a character who was killed off in the fourth book Goblet of Fire for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The two boys are drawn into a complex web of time travel that takes them back to the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire and further back still. At the same time, Harry’s scar begins hurting again.

With so much plot to get through there is little time for the dozens of minor characters who populate the books: Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood are notably absent. The play is tightly focused on Harry, Albus and Scorpius and their emotional development. Immediate family and friends make an appearance—Dumbledore’s portrait drifts into several scenes and Thornley and Dumezweni bicker enjoyably as Ron and Hermione. But there is no time for an emotional arc to be constructed: Ron is largely relegated to providing light relief from time to time. (A blessing some might say.) As a result, several plot points feel oddly unconvincing: Scorpius’s crush on Rose Granger-Weasley (Cherrelle Skeete) gets only a brief mention at the start and finish. Skeete herself is an energetic presence on stage, bringing Hermione’s daughter to life with delightful bossiness. But despite being a major presence in the play’s promotional material, she features very little in the play. Complex characters are flattened and sentimentalised in saccharine moments that border on parody. Severus Snape (Paul Bentall) loses the nasty bite that made him one of Rowling’s more intricate creations: when Scorpius thanks Snape for being his “light in the darkness,” Snape responds by instructing him to “tell Albus Severus I’m proud he carries my name.” Draco joins the gang in racing back through time after an improbable speech about how lonely it is “being Draco Malfoy.”

Jack Thorne’s script offers a sequel with a fan-fiction feel. Its emotional high points are calculated to stir up the emotional foundation laid by the seven books, while adding few new developments of convincing depth. The novels’ central themes of love and friendship, good versus evil, are there, but un-tempered by any of the grey areas that made them more interesting in the books.

Still, the Cursed Child is the Back to the Future II of the Potter world in more ways than one: the fannish atmosphere makes for a pleasantly communal experience. On the second night those of us in the same row chatted about the special effects, which bring the story to life in a way that isn’t possible in a screen adaptation. Dementors swoop over the audience, characters are sucked into phone boxes, and the stage seems to ripple as characters travel backwards in time. There are some moments of great fun, including a chaotic old people’s home for witches and wizards. Some of the nods to contemporary life make for amusing moments: when the gang visits Godric’s Hollow, Hermione observes that the village has become popular as a weekend break. “I can see why,” says Draco, squinting into the distance, “is that a farmer’s market?” Scorpius Malfoy—an awkward bookworm—is a well-developed character: Anthony Boyle steals several scenes with excellent comic timing, while Jamie Parker and Sam Clemmett put in solid performances as the father and son at the centre of the play.

The play’s failings are also its strengths: the focus on two or three characters allows for a decent exploration of Harry’s guilt at surviving to middle age. The scenes in which Harry’s dreams give a new twist to past events are some of the most thoughtful and sinister in the play: Voldemort’s hand gropes for a young Harry crouched in a cupboard under the stairs; and Hagrid’s initial visit to tell Harry that he is a wizard turns slowly into a nightmare. The play’s preoccupation with returning to the events of the early novels also helps to make the story accessible to those unfamiliar with the books. The real question, though, is why Rowling is drawn back to the genesis of her own series. That was the moment when everything started to come alive in her imagination, sure, but there is also the distinct sense that she is replaying the primal moment of her astonishing success with amazement, and a touch of fear at the task of extending it still further.