Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a follow-up to J.K. Rowling’s wildly famous saga about The Boy Who Lived, was released last week as a scriptbook and has already received lots of positive reviews.
After the success of the play in London, Rowling, along with fellow writers John Tiffany and Jack Thorne have released Cursed Child in written form for wider release around the world. While it may not have the advantage of being a fully fleshed novel or the set design to accompany it, fans have widely immersed themselves in this new instalment in the Harry Potter franchise.
Cursed Child is warm and witty and introduces the reader to some of the new characters in the wizarding world, while catching up with Harry, Ron and Hermione. In the play, Harry’s son Albus starts at Hogwarts and makes friends with the son of Harry’s former rival, Scorpius Malfoy.
The play does a good job of introducing the reader to the moody and morose Albus, who seems to resent his famous lineage, while also bringing forward the charming and clever Scorpius. Together, the two young wizards travel through time in order to prevent the death of Cedric Diggory, which occurred in the fourth book, but end up continuously changing the timeline and altering their present.
Similar to the first seven books, Harry and his friends are now the adults who project their mistakes on to their children just as Snape, Sirius and Dumbledore did to Harry. This brings about the tragic nature of the time travel storyline. While the reader re-lives some titular moments throughout the series due to the time travel aspect, there is also an emotional power within this, which brings to light how the books could have ended.
Outside of the emotional and nostalgic aspects of the play, it is also great fun to re-visit Harry, who is just as awkward and heroic as ever, Hermione, who rules the Ministry of Magic like everyone always thought she would and Ron, who couldn’t help but make lots of dad jokes.
The play ends on a note of optimism and hope as Harry and his friends finally begin to break the cycle of suffering and past mistakes which come back to haunt them.
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– Written by John Ardic
