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3.15 AVERAGE
3.15 AVERAGE
3.5-4 stars. This play wasn't phenomenal in reading but I loved the fresh view and twist on the Harry Potter world. (Although I am sure watching the play would be quite magical and astounding.) The dialogue and action was pleasantly faced paced so that the scripted format was not frustrating to read. I feel the beginning scene at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters truly encompasses all the emotions and anticipation of the readers, as we excitedly rush full speed into a new magical adventure.
My best comparison of this play would be "Back to the Future" (and all its delightful sequels) and the modern day re-introduction of my favorite 90s family shows--like Boy Meets World and Full House--with the descendants as the focus and stars of the shows (i.e. Topanga's and Cory's daughter in Girl Meets World and the Fuller House daughters as adults and now raising families of their own on Netflix's new Full House). There are definitive nods to the original series but the producers have FUN and experiment with a new generation. These re-vamped shows are not for everyone, but those who can appreciate the original message and humor will still enjoy elements of the shows. The same goes for this latest installment of Harry Potter. Instead of a push for plot and intrigue, the focus of this story is on Albus Potter (middle child) and Scorpius Malfoy with the intermingling of our beloved characters as older adults. This is a story of relationships: father and son, father vs son, daughter vs. father, best friends vs loneliness, famous legacy vs. average status, etc.
I really loved how the screenwriters played with the theme of loneliness vs love. You have a middle child (Albus) who struggles with loneliness as he fights against the burden of being the son of a famous wizard. You have Scorpius who is alienated and lonely due to infamous rumors of his parentage and the failing health of a beloved parent. There is Harry Potter, who struggles with loneliness in several aspects of his life. And the list could go on with the many other characters and their personal struggles.
But the bottom line message comes down to that we all will face darkness in our lives, but the final question comes down to whether or not you let the darkness make or break you-- whether a hero or villain is born.
"Tom Riddle didn't emerge from his dark place. And so Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort." (Draco, Part 1: Act 2, Scene 15, page 136).
You contrast that with orphaned Harry with his abused childhood and heavy burden throughout the previous 7 books and can witness that he became a hero.
All in all, I had a delightful time reading this play and I appreciated entering J.K. Rowling's world with new eyes. I would recommend this latest Harry Potter installment to my friends.
My best comparison of this play would be "Back to the Future" (and all its delightful sequels) and the modern day re-introduction of my favorite 90s family shows--like Boy Meets World and Full House--with the descendants as the focus and stars of the shows (i.e. Topanga's and Cory's daughter in Girl Meets World and the Fuller House daughters as adults and now raising families of their own on Netflix's new Full House). There are definitive nods to the original series but the producers have FUN and experiment with a new generation. These re-vamped shows are not for everyone, but those who can appreciate the original message and humor will still enjoy elements of the shows. The same goes for this latest installment of Harry Potter. Instead of a push for plot and intrigue, the focus of this story is on Albus Potter (middle child) and Scorpius Malfoy with the intermingling of our beloved characters as older adults. This is a story of relationships: father and son, father vs son, daughter vs. father, best friends vs loneliness, famous legacy vs. average status, etc.
I really loved how the screenwriters played with the theme of loneliness vs love. You have a middle child (Albus) who struggles with loneliness as he fights against the burden of being the son of a famous wizard. You have Scorpius who is alienated and lonely due to infamous rumors of his parentage and the failing health of a beloved parent. There is Harry Potter, who struggles with loneliness in several aspects of his life. And the list could go on with the many other characters and their personal struggles.
But the bottom line message comes down to that we all will face darkness in our lives, but the final question comes down to whether or not you let the darkness make or break you-- whether a hero or villain is born.
"Tom Riddle didn't emerge from his dark place. And so Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort." (Draco, Part 1: Act 2, Scene 15, page 136).
You contrast that with orphaned Harry with his abused childhood and heavy burden throughout the previous 7 books and can witness that he became a hero.
All in all, I had a delightful time reading this play and I appreciated entering J.K. Rowling's world with new eyes. I would recommend this latest Harry Potter installment to my friends.
Sigh. I was so ready to love this new story in the Harry Potter saga, and I'm willing to consider that it could work slightly better when viewed on the stage, where real live actors can help to give depth to the characters and the magical special effects can thrill the audience. However, even with all my attempts to use my imagination I had some major problems with the story. Some spoilers ahead...
I suppose my first problem is just in getting behind the concept of time travel. Since the plot revolves heavily around time travel, that in itself is problematic for me. Using time travel is tricky even within a magical universe and should not be taken lightly. J.K. Rowling wrote time travel into the Prisoner of Azkaban in a way that was actually successful, where there were clear rules and limitations set on the time travel, and the characters' actions in going back in time were actually written into the first account of the events (if you read the book you know what I mean by that I hope...) In this book, however, the time travel runs rampant all over the story, and I'm sad to say it feels extremely careless and not very thoroughly thought out. Yes, it's magic, but it seems very unrealistic that these characters would be able to set anything right after traveling so far back in time and making any changes at all.
As someone who is pretty attached to the plot of the original series, I found it very upsetting to watch these beloved plots changed by the careless actions of these little brats!!!!! Even though I knew the point would ultimately be for them to find a way to set things right, this messing with the scenes from the original books made it very difficult for me to like the characters who I assume were supposed to be the protagonists. For me it also kept the story way too grounded in the previous books, rather than jumping off into something new. I understand that the past continuing to live with the characters was part of the point, but did we actually have to travel to the past to make that clear? It seems a bit cheap and a bit clumsy, to say the least.
Overall it felt like there were too many stories being told and not enough attention given to any one so that they all felt flat and lacked development. Again, the stage and talented actors could help to remedy this slightly, but I'm not really sure by how much. The child characters were sadly unlikeable and undeveloped, and we barely even saw many of them! The character with perhaps the most potentially interesting story to tell, Voldemort's daughter(!), was barely in the story. The alternate universe versions of the characters felt all wrong, even within an altered universe! The adult versions of Harry, Hermione, and Ron behaved inconsistently with their childhood characters. I get it, they're adults, and they're stressed, and Harry didn't have parent models to look up to, but somehow their behavior still did not feel true to their characters. And don't get me started on the portrait of Dumbledore having an emotional breakdown. That behavior seemed not only inconsistent with Dumbledore but inconsistent with a PORTRAIT of Dumbledore.
With regret, I must conclude that I would prefer to "obliviate" The Cursed Child from my memory and return to the memories of these characters as I originally left them, right at the end of Deathly Hallows.
I suppose my first problem is just in getting behind the concept of time travel. Since the plot revolves heavily around time travel, that in itself is problematic for me. Using time travel is tricky even within a magical universe and should not be taken lightly. J.K. Rowling wrote time travel into the Prisoner of Azkaban in a way that was actually successful, where there were clear rules and limitations set on the time travel, and the characters' actions in going back in time were actually written into the first account of the events (if you read the book you know what I mean by that I hope...) In this book, however, the time travel runs rampant all over the story, and I'm sad to say it feels extremely careless and not very thoroughly thought out. Yes, it's magic, but it seems very unrealistic that these characters would be able to set anything right after traveling so far back in time and making any changes at all.
As someone who is pretty attached to the plot of the original series, I found it very upsetting to watch these beloved plots changed by the careless actions of these little brats!!!!! Even though I knew the point would ultimately be for them to find a way to set things right, this messing with the scenes from the original books made it very difficult for me to like the characters who I assume were supposed to be the protagonists. For me it also kept the story way too grounded in the previous books, rather than jumping off into something new. I understand that the past continuing to live with the characters was part of the point, but did we actually have to travel to the past to make that clear? It seems a bit cheap and a bit clumsy, to say the least.
Overall it felt like there were too many stories being told and not enough attention given to any one so that they all felt flat and lacked development. Again, the stage and talented actors could help to remedy this slightly, but I'm not really sure by how much. The child characters were sadly unlikeable and undeveloped, and we barely even saw many of them! The character with perhaps the most potentially interesting story to tell, Voldemort's daughter(!), was barely in the story. The alternate universe versions of the characters felt all wrong, even within an altered universe! The adult versions of Harry, Hermione, and Ron behaved inconsistently with their childhood characters. I get it, they're adults, and they're stressed, and Harry didn't have parent models to look up to, but somehow their behavior still did not feel true to their characters. And don't get me started on the portrait of Dumbledore having an emotional breakdown. That behavior seemed not only inconsistent with Dumbledore but inconsistent with a PORTRAIT of Dumbledore.
With regret, I must conclude that I would prefer to "obliviate" The Cursed Child from my memory and return to the memories of these characters as I originally left them, right at the end of Deathly Hallows.
AHHHH how do I feel about this book? AHHHH mainly. For a start, I have no idea how to rate it because it's a script, not a novel and I hardly ever read scripts, so I rated it for pure enjoyment rather than quality, which is why I gave it five stars. If I took into account the quality of the writing as a novel it would be much lower, but that's just because there's very little more than dialogue to go on.
This was my main point for the review, the fact that it always felt like there was something missing. All the way through I understood the dialogue and enjoyed the story but it was missing the emotion and intensity of the previous Potter books, which I think would come across more if you saw the stage production. From the dialogue alone the characters were well developed and had distinct personalities as well as purposes, but showed little to no emotion.
As a follow on it was okay. It did manage to tell us a little more about Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Draco as they get older but even though the story centers around Albus (Harry and Ginny's second child) and Scropius (Draco and Astoria's only child) I felt I learned more about the adults than the other two. Other characters mentioned such as Rose and Delphi didn't feel as developed. Although Delphi is extremely important to the plot, up to the point where this is revealed she and Rose do just feel like girls to be ogled over rather than actual characters. Though I have to credit J.K for using her classics degree for the use of Delphi's name (also she mentioned the Spartans like twice which made me excited because she actually knew what she was talking about and the Spartans are great).
The plot did feel a little childish in parts compared to the last book but this isn't really a complaint because I know she had to write it bearing in mind families would be watching and reading it, so I can't fault her there it's just something I noticed. Something else I noticed was that there was a lot of subtle references to the novels, these were great and I enjoyed them when they came up but I feel like she held back a bit on these in some places as not the confused newcomers to the Wizarding World.
The plot was far fetched in places and seemed to jump all over the place before the climax at the end, but it was extremely fast paced. There was just enough of the introduction to get to know the character (and let my mind stop screaming to itself about the fact that it was actually reading another Harry Potter book) before the plot started. Although some parts of it did seem written for the pure purpose of making the original novels feel more dramatic as appose to a story in itself, which is something I would have rather read. The characters did manage to feel consistent all the way through however, I feel they acted realistically both in their physical reactions and emotional ones.
Overall this extremely anticipated book didn't necessarily disappoint because I had no idea what to expect in the first place but it did leave me craving something that was missing, which I think was actors but as I haven't seen the play I can't confirm. This truly is a historic book, although it reads like ordinary children's literature, but it really something that will define my generation as being part of such an influential and awesome franchise.
Oh and Albus and Scopius are totally in love and no one will tell me otherwise.
This was my main point for the review, the fact that it always felt like there was something missing. All the way through I understood the dialogue and enjoyed the story but it was missing the emotion and intensity of the previous Potter books, which I think would come across more if you saw the stage production. From the dialogue alone the characters were well developed and had distinct personalities as well as purposes, but showed little to no emotion.
As a follow on it was okay. It did manage to tell us a little more about Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Draco as they get older but even though the story centers around Albus (Harry and Ginny's second child) and Scropius (Draco and Astoria's only child) I felt I learned more about the adults than the other two. Other characters mentioned such as Rose and Delphi didn't feel as developed. Although Delphi is extremely important to the plot, up to the point where this is revealed she and Rose do just feel like girls to be ogled over rather than actual characters. Though I have to credit J.K for using her classics degree for the use of Delphi's name (also she mentioned the Spartans like twice which made me excited because she actually knew what she was talking about and the Spartans are great).
The plot did feel a little childish in parts compared to the last book but this isn't really a complaint because I know she had to write it bearing in mind families would be watching and reading it, so I can't fault her there it's just something I noticed. Something else I noticed was that there was a lot of subtle references to the novels, these were great and I enjoyed them when they came up but I feel like she held back a bit on these in some places as not the confused newcomers to the Wizarding World.
The plot was far fetched in places and seemed to jump all over the place before the climax at the end, but it was extremely fast paced. There was just enough of the introduction to get to know the character (and let my mind stop screaming to itself about the fact that it was actually reading another Harry Potter book) before the plot started. Although some parts of it did seem written for the pure purpose of making the original novels feel more dramatic as appose to a story in itself, which is something I would have rather read. The characters did manage to feel consistent all the way through however, I feel they acted realistically both in their physical reactions and emotional ones.
Overall this extremely anticipated book didn't necessarily disappoint because I had no idea what to expect in the first place but it did leave me craving something that was missing, which I think was actors but as I haven't seen the play I can't confirm. This truly is a historic book, although it reads like ordinary children's literature, but it really something that will define my generation as being part of such an influential and awesome franchise.
Oh and Albus and Scopius are totally in love and no one will tell me otherwise.
Brilliant. Pure magic that I had missed since Deathly Hallows. Can't wait to see it performed on stage.
Although I liked the story. So much of this play was on the nose. Not nearly as clever and detail oriented as the first 7 books. The character development left something to be desired, and well loved characters acted out of their personalities. It was like revisiting old friends, and some of the magic of Harry Potter was there - but in the end, this would have been better a several stories and novels written out.
It's great to be back in the world which we already know so well. It's pity, that 8th story of Harry Potter was not novelized and that it is just in script form. However main plot of story is well connected to other books about Harry Potter and it's quite interesting.
It was alright, nothing like the original Harry Potter.
It was a bit childish at the beginning but it did get better as the story started to take form.
It was a bit childish at the beginning but it did get better as the story started to take form.
fast-paced
AMAZING!!!!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET THEM MAKE A MOVIE OUT OF THIS, OR AT LEAST BRING THE PLAY TO AUSTRALIA!!!!!!!!!
Update: Yep, it's in Australia and I'm seeing it for the second time tomorrow :D
Update: Yep, it's in Australia and I'm seeing it for the second time tomorrow :D