Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Broadway Reviews Google
Critic'southward Pick
Review: 'Harry Potter' Back Onstage, Streamlined and Still Magical
"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" returned to Broadway, now in ane part instead of 2. It may feel smaller, but is no less dazzling.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
- NYT Critic's Pick
- Broadway, Drama , Play
- 3 hours, 30 minutes
- Open Run
- Lyric Theater, 213 Westward. 42nd St.
- 877-250-2929
Similar a lot of children, Harry Potter grew bigger as he got older. J.M. Rowling'due south later novels in the series came in twice as thick, or more, as the first. The lengths of the moving picture versions peaked with the adaptation of that final volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," split into ii parts running a combined four and a one-half hours. In 2018, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" — an original play by Jack Thorne, based on a story by Thorne, Rowling and John Tiffany — opened on Broadway at the lavishly remodeled Lyric Theater. Also split in ii, the total experience clocked in at more than v hours.
But now Harry seems to accept shrunk. After a pandemic closure (and reported problems with production costs), "Cursed Child" has returned, shorter and more streamlined, its 2 parts collapsed into a unmarried one and its length reduced by a tertiary. The creators accept kept repose on the mechanics of this revision; phone call it "Harry Potter and the Mysterious Abridgment." I assume someone pointed a wand at the published script and shouted, "Brevioso!"
The new version, which opened on Tuesday, does feel smaller — its themes starker, its concession to fandom more blatant. But equally directed by Tiffany and choreographed by Steven Hoggett, with an essential score from Imogen Heap, information technology remains diamond-precipitous in its staging and dazzling in its visual imagination, equally magical every bit any spell or potion.
The essence of the plot hasn't changed. "Cursed Child" nonetheless opens where the epilogue of "Deathly Hallows" leaves off, 19 years after the volume'south climactic Battle of Hogwarts. On their way to that schoolhouse of witchcraft and wizardry are Albus Potter (James Romney) — the 2d son of Harry Potter (Steve Haggard, in for James Snyder at the performance I attended) and Ginny Potter (Diane Davis) — and Rose Granger-Weasley (Nadia Dark-brown), the girl of Hermione Granger (Jenny Jules) and Ron Weasley (David Abeles).
Aboard the Hogwarts Express, Albus meets Scorpius Malfoy (Brady Dalton Richards), the son of Harry's former nemesis Draco Malfoy (Aaron Bartz), who offers him sweets. Albus and Scorpius'south burgeoning friendship upsets both of their fathers, complicating already fraught relationships and imperiling the entire wizarding world. Because what is Harry Potter without a threatened apocalypse and the occasional chocolate frog?
Paradigm
The audience experience begins long before the lights get down, through the sumptuous lobby and into the auditorium. Every carpet, curtain, light fixture and wallpaper strip helps to immerse you into the Potterverse. Information technology'southward a marvel of imagination, and more shows should retrieve almost extending pattern beyond the phase. Even the reminder to wear a mask is presented as a boarding announcement for the Hogwarts Express.
In the opening moments, that train seems to take been refitted as a loftier-speed rail. Everyone moved and spoke so fast — Jules and Richards were almost unintelligible — I was briefly worried that this new version was just the old one played at 1.5 times speed. I one time counted two consecutive seconds in which nil happened onstage. One time only.
Yet there are excisions, most of them so surgical y'all would never notice, though I did slightly miss the beloved Hogwarts groundskeeper Hagrid. Other changes are more pointed, like the rendering of Albus and Scorpius'south human relationship as explicitly romantic, which has a knock-on event of flattening the father-son disharmonize. Gone too are the dream sequences that bolstered the play's mournful tenor and provided much of its exposition.
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With a lot of that context missing, the show is now more than difficult to recommend to anyone not already versed in Potteralia. (Surely there must be someone left?) The most audible reaction I heard came when a character announced herself equally Dolores Umbridge, a revelation that means nothing without knowledge of the books and films. Luckily, I had brought along my girl, an 8-year-onetime who has made her own butterbeer and strongly identifies as a Gryffindor.
At pause, she turned to me, eyes bright and round every bit golden snitches. "This moving picture has great special effects!" she said. She oftentimes calls plays movies, a beautiful way to troll her theater critic mother. Notwithstanding, I couldn't entirely disagree. The original "Cursed Child," with its luxuriant running time and hyperfocus — for better and worse — on the emotional lives of its characters, felt explicitly theatrical, the wresting of a real work of dramatic fine art from a massively popular franchise. This new version remains ravishingly entertaining, but is also, like the movie adaptations, a more obvious attempt to cash in on Pottermania.
However at that place are loads of films — even those with the extravagant C.1000.I. budgets of the "Harry Potter" movies — that come nowhere near approaching the magic of Tiffany's staging, enhanced past Christine Jones's set, Katrina Lindsay's costumes, Neil Austin's lighting and Gareth Fry'due south sound. Jamie Harrison's illusions, the stuff of phoenix plume and unicorn horn, are an absolute astonishment. (Were fire marshals ensorcelled into approving this show'southward pyrotechnics?) During the sped-upwardly outset, I wondered, darkly, if the show could now be as just another theme park attraction. It's more than than that. Besides, three and a half hours of enchantment is still a hell of a ride.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
At the Lyric Theater, Manhattan; harrypottertheplay.com. Running fourth dimension: 3 hours thirty minutes.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/theater/harry-potter-cursed-child-broadway-review.html
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