With critics and audiences, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” can continue the success of the books and films on the theater stage. From February 19, the play will be running in Hamburg in a slimmed-down version. Can it keep up with the five and a half hour predecessor?
In 2011, almost twelve years ago, the “Harry Potter” film series with “The Deathly Hallows – Part 2” was completed. But anyone who thinks that the story about the magician of the same name and his friends in the fight against dark magic was told to the end is wrong. Because instead of ending her novels with the victory against Lord Voldemort, the author JK Rowling wrote a short epilogue. This takes place 19 years after the great battle for the Hogwarts magic school on the well-known platform 9 ¾ – and introduces the main character Harry Potter as an adult family man and his eleven-year-old son, Albus Severus.
From that very epilogue, the two British producers Colin Callender and Sonia Friedman developed the idea for a play. “We found that JK Rowling didn’t close the door, but left it open in a conscious or unconscious way,” Callender explained in an interview with ntv.de in New York. “And we were right. She had a lot more to say about all of this.” It was important to everyone involved not to retell the films for the stage, but to immerse themselves in a completely new story with well-known and new characters.
“One of the challenges from the beginning was to write a play that would appeal to both Harry Potter fans without looking down on them, and still appeal to the non-Harry Potter fan – that is, people who haven’t read the books or the films know – to be accessible,” says Callender. “It was quite a balancing act because on the one hand you have to explain who the different people are and you need a backstory to understand what’s happening on stage. But if you explain too much, you bore those who read the books and the know movies.”
The result is impressive: The focus of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” by Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany is Albus Severus – a classic, troubled middle child, shy and full of fear, in his first year at Hogwarts in the as evil prestigious Slytherin house to come. The fact that his father is the most famous magician of all time doesn’t relieve the pressure on him. On the Hogwarts Express, he befriends Scorpius Malfoy, the son of his father’s former nemesis, Draco Malfoy. The two boys quickly become the school’s biggest misfits and turn the world of magic upside down in a daring attempt to change the past.
In addition to the gripping story, however, it is the many individual components that make the piece a unique, magical spectacle that you can hardly blink. “We’re not a high-tech show, but there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make it look easy on stage,” explains Callender. The play’s planning involved sound and lighting designers, costume designers, make-up artists, set designers and motion directors from the outset, all working in harmony to make the illusions – “simple as they are” – look magical .
With audiences and critics alike, the eighth story in Rowling’s saga continued the success of the books and films on stage. In the UK, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won nine Olivier Awards, including Best Play and Best Director, after its premiere in July 2016, making it the most awarded production of all time. On New York’s Broadway in 2018, it became the most awarded production of the season with a total of 25 Tony Awards in six categories. And also in Hamburg, where the German version of the story has been performed for the first time as a non-English language production since December 2021, it recently received the renowned German Live Entertainment Award (LEA) as “Show of the Year 2020/2021”.
However, the breathtaking story of Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, who embark on a dangerous downward spiral, also had its disadvantages. Because with a playing time of five and a half hours on two match days, the production is not only extremely long, but also unaffordable for many fans with a proud ticket price of currently around 200 euros. Just arriving from outside with the extended family? Difficult. Director John Tiffany and author Jack Thorne therefore used the corona lockdown to “look at our play again with new eyes and to scrutinize it”. The goal: to make the story more accessible to the audience, shorten it as much as possible and “preserving its heart, soul and magic.”
“The decision was not about reducing costs due to the pandemic. We are actually spending a lot more now,” emphasizes Matthias Lienemann, Managing Director of Mehr! Theater in Hamburg at ntv.de. Because despite the cut, the actual staging of the show and its components remain the same. In other words, a few popular characters are missing. However, since many performers played dual roles, the one-piece requires a larger cast to save time. The crew is also being expanded behind the scenes, “because changes to costumes or on the set have to happen more quickly,” explains producer Colin Callender.
The new, three-and-a-half-hour version has been running in the USA, Australia and Japan for several months – and with great success. At the more! The one-piece will celebrate its premiere in theaters on February 19, 2023. Callender can reassure Harry Potter fans who now fear the cuts could undermine character development. “In fact, I think the opposite is true because some key scenes are now sharper in focus than in the longer version.” Some parts of the story were “more streamlined” now, according to Callender. “The difficult relationship between father and son and the deep friendship between the two boys.”
The benefits of the slimmed-down play were immediately apparent, Callender reports: “There’s no question that the two parts presented some kind of barrier to entry for certain members of the audience. We’re seeing a lot more families now, because they save a lot more time and money with one show.” With a new price of 59.90 euros per ticket, “Harry Potter and the Enchanted Child” can be an experience for the whole family in the coming year.