Asking somebody who picked up the first Harry Potter book when he was 11—the age Harry himself was when his world was turned upside down with the revelation that he was a wizard—to review the final instalment of JK Rowling’s hugely successful series is quite a gamble. As I type this, it is only my consideration for you, dear reader, that is holding me back from GOING ALL CAPS and screaming my praise for Harry Potter And The Cursed Child to the high heavens. But that would be me as a fan. Let me try it as just a reader. Cursed Child is different from all the previous Harry Potter books for several reasons. The most obvious, of course, is the format. This is not a book. It is the script for a play. The fact is obvious from the get go, with the book starting with italicized stage directions. Rowling has been quite vocal about how this is not a book and should not be read as one, but nevertheless it is easy to fall back on the old dictum: If it looks like a book, feels like a book, and even smells like a book, then it must be a book! But it is not one. Remember that, as it is key to the various issues that afflict Cursed Child.
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There’s no getting around it: the script format of Cursed Child certainly does take away from the reading experience for the first few chapters. The fact that every dialogue is written as the speaker’s name followed by the dialogue is something that stares you in the face from page one. But that said, the mind adapts very quickly and soon you find you’re reading it almost like a book. Another issue arising out of the fact that it is a play and not a book is that we get to understand the original meaning of the phrase ‘behind the scenes’. There is a lot that happens in Cursed Child outside of what is written on the page, and those who are used to JK Rowling’s rich tapestry of words will feel like they are gnawing on bones when yesterday there was prime steak for dinner. So be warned. Which brings us to another reason why Cursed Child is different from the other Harry Potter books. It is the first one to not be entirely written by Rowling herself. The cover of Cursed Child proclaims that it is ‘based on an original new story by JK Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne’. It shows. With all due respect to Messrs Tiffany and Thorne, the dialogue in several places seems choppy and often quite out of character for the one doing the talking. It’s something Rowling on her own would simply not do. Then we come to the setting of the book itself. While every Harry Potter book has been placed a year ahead of the previous one, Cursed Child takes up from the epilogue of Deathly Hallows, 19 years after the events of the main series. This is important. Although the title reads Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, Harry himself is middleaged and very dad-ish. The story mostly revolves around his younger son Albus Severus Potter, He Who Was Named After Two Headmasters. Not to give too much of the story away, but there is a lot of parent-child angst going on in the book, whether it is between Harry and Albus or Draco Malfoy and his son Scorpius, or even to do with the Cursed Child. This actually works. The point is that Harry, Ron and Hermione are now adults. They have normal (for want of a better word in the wizarding world) day jobs, bills to pay, children to take to school, the usual drill. This is far from the days of breaking the rules, sneaking about, saving the day, and generally creating a ruckus wherever they went. It’s refreshing to read their characters in this new light. But here is where the first problem emerges. Ron. Sure, he’s always been sort of like a Labrador—goofy, loyal, fierce when needed—but he has never been totally useless. That’s the impression Play Ron (I refuse to just call him just Ron) gives. It’s completely fine that he is a stay-at-home dad. In fact, more power to him! But that doesn’t mean he should be completely useless and mostly redundant when the dragon dung really hits the fan! Ron was there to beat the giant wizard’s chess game in Sorcerer’s Stone, he was there to enter the Chamber of Secrets with Harry, he got his leg broken by dog-Sirius, and even saved Harry’s life later on in the series. To reduce Ronald Bilius Weasley to mere comic relief is a grave injustice. Then we come to the story itself. Here I must credit the authors with great bravery. The story revolves around an issue that innumerable fans have raised since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published—time travel. Why, they asked, if Harry and Hermione could use time travel to save Sirius and Buckbeak, couldn’t the same tool be used to, say, kill baby Tom Riddle Jr or save Sirius for the second time, or save Harry’s parents, or even Neville’s parents… This list goes on. The point is that, if you have time travel as a power, why haven’t all the evils of history been erased? Cursed Child seeks to answer this question in more ways than one. There is, of course, the mechanics of time travel. Apparently, Time Turners come in varying levels of quality. While some allow you to go back into the past for as long as you want, others provide you with a short window into the past after which you are catapulted back into the present. Still others don’t allow you to go as far into the past as you would like. But, even if a wizard got his hands on a high-quality time-turner, the repercussions of time travel would be a big reason not to go through with it. Time travel in fiction has historically come in various forms. In one form, you can travel back in time and change something, resulting in a splitting of the future into multiple timelines. In another, you can go back in time and change something, resulting in all subsequent events being correspondingly altered. The latter is what happens in Cursed Child. Every time history is altered, the present changes, often disastrously. A dark power wants to alter history so that certain critical events do not come to pass, and it is down to our heroes to stop this from happening. That’s basically the crux of the situation. Overall, Cursed Child was a good read. Nowhere near the quality of the seven books, but then, it isn’t a book. The play format leaves a lot to be desired if the only choice you have is to read the script and not watch the play itself. But that said, it’s a return to the magical world of Harry Potter, and there is more than enough sorcery to satisfy even the most ardent fan.