Harry Potter casts spell on stage in ‘Cursed Child’
LONDON — Fans just can’t get enough of Harry Potter.
So even as J.K. Rowling crafts a Potter universe spinoff for the movies with the current blockbuster film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the West End’s hottest ticket is “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which is sold out through February 2017.
In the six-hour, two-part stage production that presents the boy wizard at 37 (then very quickly, 40), Harry is now married to Ginny Weasley, sister of his best friend, Ron, who married brainy Hermione. Both couples have children — Albus Potter and Rose Granger-Weasley — and all are in danger again.
“Cursed Child” is shown in two parts at the Palace Theatre, with magical stage effects that virtually define state of the art.
Those stupendously inventive surprises are never meant to be revealed. As you leave part one, ushers distribute pins that counsel #KeeptheSecrets.”
And we shall.
Rowling’s name is prominently displayed, as “Cursed Child” is derived from an original story devised by Rowling, who considers this the “8th story, 19 years later” and collaborated with Jack Thorne (who gets sole credit for the script) and John Tiffany (who directed). The script was a best-seller in the United States, where the production is expected to open next year on Broadway.
The buzz is that a bidding war is in progress: Every eligible Broadway musical house is eager to present it.
The Palace, eight stories high and 125 years old, is an ideal setting for the Gothic tale, which unfolds much like a black-and-white movie between the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, various homes and darkly forbidding forests.
Black-caped stagehands dance as furniture slides on and off while the ingenious sets often fly all eight stories into the upper wings.
Young children — under 10 — are dressed like Hogwarts students from Harry’s Gryffindor House, one of four at the school.
What’s best about “Cursed Child”? Easily, the new characters we’ve never seen before (and which we shouldn’t identify) — and the obvious pleasure it gives to the fans by bringing up so many elements of the Potterverse, including beloved — and loathed — professors and characters we might have once thought dead.
Last Friday, as part two was to play, we wondered if Potter’s “magic” had been cursed when the theater and parts of Soho were hit by an unexplained power blackout that began at 5:20 that afternoon.
Gathered in darkness in front of the Palace, security explained that at 7:30 p.m., when the curtain was to rise, the producers would make an announcement.
Happily the power returned at 7:20 p.m. and although some West End shows canceled that night’s performances, “Cursed Child” went on. An hour late but wholly satisfying because, yes, the magic was back.
