SPOILER ALERT!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

6:09 pm 8 August 2016
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling, John Kerr Tiffany, Jack Thorne

I hate to admit it, but I was disappointed. I suppose that it is at least partly my fault for having such high expectations for this book. Of course it wasn't actually written by Rowling (though she did approve and help with it), and it was a script so it was never going to have the same feel and style as the other Harry Potter books. However, some parts of the story were still irritating to me:

 

1. The trolley witch - need I say anymore? What even was that part?! I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity. I know that Harry Potter is fantasy and can be a little ridiculous sometimes, but this was on a whole new level in my opinion

 

2. Voldemort had a daughter? REALLY? I suppose I am willing to accept the fan theory that she was in face just the Lestrange's daughter and was brought up by Voldemort or just led to believe that she was his daughter because Bellatrix loved him and wanted to continue his line (she was crazy enough for this to sound plausible). But still, to me it seemed like a lazy way for JK to continue the series just by bringing back some part of the old dead enemy from previous books.

 

3. Time travel - why did it work differently to Prisoner of Azkaban? In PoA, when they travelled back in time to save Sirius and Buckbeak, they didn't actually change what happened but instead they caused it to happen. Whereas in Cursed Child, Scorpius and Albus were able to travel back in time and change the past. Why the change/

 

4. I missed the characters I know and love so well from the previous books - so many of them were just absent (the other Granger-Weasley and Potter children, Teddy, Neville, etc.) and many others who were there just didn't feel real anymore (mainly Ron).

 

5. Harry claimed that he had no good father figures to set an example for him. Okay, maybe pre-Hogwarts he didn't, but after that he had Sirius, Hagrid, Lupin, Mr Weasley, Dumbledore (to an extent - I will admit that Dumbledore wasn't always the best role model)

 

There were things that I enjoyed (I know that I've made it sound like I hated it). For instance, the Albus/Scorpius friendship was great (but I don't ship them romantically). I love both of them and I really just wanted to give them a hug. But why on earth was the Scorpius/Rose thing tagged on the end like that with no earlier build-up?!)

 

I'm really struggling to give this a rating at the moment because I want to get past my initial disappointment and judge the play on its own merit, not how it lived up to the other Harry Potter books.

(show spoiler)
2016