Warning! Spoilers ahead.
Since book seven of the "Harry Potter" series, we've waited for book eight. "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," billed as "the eighth story, 19 years later" seemed to be the answer. "Cursed Child," is a play split into two parts, written by Jack Thorne and based on a story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany.
While previews for the play started on June 7, the general public didn't get their hands on the script until it was released on Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling's birthday, July 31. Fans were hungry for the new material. I know I was. I had heard some weird rumors, but I was sure that they weren't true.
Many bookstores held midnight parties again. When I went to a Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy the following morning, I was greeted by empty display tables and a distressed-looking notice saying that "Cursed Child" was sold out.
I couldn't bear to wait any longer. I got a copy on my e-reader instead.
"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is, appropriately enough, a play about time travel. That's what we're all doing, isn't it? It's certainly what I was doing -- going back in time to when I was a little girl, falling in love with some funny paperback books about a magic school. Or to when I was a pimply preteen, ripping through "Deathly Hallows" and crying as I turned each page.
"Cursed Child" is sort of like that, and sort of...not.
Reading "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is like going back to your old high school and seeing how much it’s changed. The kids are all different, some of the building is different and you’re different, too. Everything looks smaller than it used to be. You’re happy to be there, but there’s also a darkness, a weird, sad feeling inside of you that you can’t erase. Is "Cursed Child" even good?
It's hard to say. The story doesn't really seem to have any sort of arc between the two parts, giving it an awkward, bumpy trajectory. It stops and starts way too many times as micro-conflicts are solved and plot cul-de-sacs have to be swerved into and out of. Who even is the cursed child?
The cursed child could be Albus, since he can't seem to do anything right. It could also be Harry, who still feels tainted by Voldemort's soul and who is called "cursed" by Aunt Petunia in a few of his dream sequences. It could be Delphi, Voldemort's daughter. It could be Scorpius, a social pariah who has a family history of being cursed. It could even be Cedric, who seems cursed to die.
The title is perhaps the least confusing part of the play. "Cursed Child" wasn't written by J.K. Rowling, it was simply adapted from a story that she and two other people developed. There are times when it doesn't even feel like Rowling was involved at all, like when Scorpius says, "Wow. Squeak. My geekness is a-quivering," or when Professor McGonagall lets Harry boss her around. In a particularly troubling moment, Ron gifts Albus a love potion, even though he had a near-death experience related to such a potion in "Order of the Phoenix."
Many characters like Rose, Hugo, James and Lily unceremoniously fall to the wayside and are forgotten about over the course of the play. It becomes difficult to remember that Harry and Ginny have more than one child.
I don't really buy Harry as a controlling father, as a father who would tell his child that he sometimes wished he wasn't his son. I don't buy him as someone who would use the Marauder's Map to make Hogwarts, the place where he always felt free, a place where his son would always be under surveillance. That's not Rowling's Harry. That's not the Harry Potter that I know. The story is somewhat cheapened by this new version of Harry.
As the play comes to an end and the characters watch the murder of Harry's parents, I begin to understand what Albus is talking about when he says much earlier, "I know it all, Dad. Blah, blah, blah." I've seen this all before. I've seen James and Lily being murdered countless times. I was with Harry when Hagrid came to find him. I was there at the first Triwizard event. And the second. And the third. I've read the books to tatters and seen all of the films and I know this all by heart. I don't want to see James and Lily get murdered again. I've been there before, and the emotion in that scene is all wrung out.
That's true of the whole story. The emotion was wrung out of the pages before we could even get our hands on it because we've been here so many times before. We have heard this talk between Harry and Dumbledore. We know why Snape did what he did and the kind of patronus he has. We know that Ron and Hermione end up together.
The main criticism that I've seen of "Cursed Child" is that it seems too much like fan fiction. It certainly has all the elements of a fanfic, but why is that such a problem for a community that loves fan fiction as much as the "Harry Potter" fandom? "Cursed Child" is cheesy, but that's not what makes it feel like fanfic. It feels like fanfic because it lacks authenticity. It doesn't have the weight that the seven books had. It doesn't feel like it was planned or part of the "Harry Potter" canon.
I wanted to like the play, and I don't hate it, but it certainly isn't on par with the main book series or even the films -- not even close.
"Cursed Child" regurgitates the best parts of the "Harry Potter" books, but lacks any of the character or craft that made those books so special.
