Here's the big news about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the two-part play which is the de-facto eighth installment of the saga by Jack Thorne, from a story by Thorne, director John Tiffany and author creator JK Rowling. Despite anything anyone tells you, you don't have to know all seven previous stories. I had personally bailed after the second movie and forgot most of what I'd known from the first; and I not only understood pretty much everything that was going on in the play, I had a ball doing so. To be sure, the play is rife with references that rabid Harry Potter fans would legitimately and justifiably expect in an authentic experience. But there are very few of those that don't create their own context, just because of the way they're situated in the story. Indeed, I wonder if it isn't possible to have Harry Potter and the Cursed Child be one's initiation into the storytelling universe.
What makes the play able to pull off this amazing trick is the fact that it's set 19 years after the seventh installment; Harry & Jinny and Ron & Hermione are married couples in their mid-late 30s now, and sending their own children to Hogwarts. So the tale is as much a next-generation story as one set on Picard's Enterprise, with the difference being that the first generation is still very much alive and able to participate.
The plotting is deft, complex, twisty and satisfying. And the story ultimately quite moving; which might not be such a surprise to Harry Potter veterans; but if you're new to the universe, or just not conversant with its entire oevre, that might take you by surprise.
On top of this, the staging and design are magnificent and opulent, as theatrically magical as the films are cinematically magical. The play may be borne of a pop-culture phenomenon, but it's not a gimmick or a fan lure like the doctor who experience exhibition; it embodies full-blooded, vigorous storytelling and features a plethora of intriguing characters. Perhaps not incidentally, this new Broadway mounting, in the wake of the still running the London success, currently features most of the original London lead players in its extraordinary cast, which adds to the sense of witness from within.
More revealing than this I won't say, nor, I think, would the producers want me to (the little pin badge that gets handed to you as you leave says, "keep the secrets"); I'll just say that the ride is every bit as good as…well, as good as it would have to be to earn its keep. Which it does, nonstop.
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