All the Wizarding World's a Stage: Initial Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

[connielane]

First, and most generally, believe the hype. It is phenomenal, truly. Even if you have read the playscript (of which there are two versions now available, the rehearsal version and the final version), you are still going to have your face rocked off. I am very curious to see what happens with the Tony nominations next week (HPCC *just* got in

Comments

[connielane]

- I'm less hostile to the idea of DE!Cedric than I was. I think hearing how shocked and horrified Scorpius is at finding this out really underlines how Wrong it feels, and it *should* feel wrong. And when they sabotage him in the Second Task, it struck me as really nasty how Bagman makes fun of him and everyone laughs at him. Part of why it feels so wrong, of course, is that it's so briefly dealt with in the play, and we don't see what happened between the Triwizard Tournament and the Battle of Hogwarts to make him turn. Nor do we have time to explore what it must have been like for him, after being embarrassed so badly in the first two tasks (not to mention sabotaged, which Cedric *must* have been aware of), to have to see Harry win the Tournament by himself, and come back to the maze with this insane story about Voldemort -- which surely even fewer people believed in that timeline, because he didn't have Cedric's dead body to let people know that *anything* happened at all.

- Speaking of Cedric, the scene where we actually do see him, where he thinks Albus and Scorpius are part of the Third Task and "frees" them, is devastating. They're so in awe of him, because they've read all about him, and they have to let him go, knowing exactly what's going to happen. Really well done.

[angua9]

Speaking of Cedric, the scene where we actually do see him, where he thinks Albus and Scorpius are part of the Third Task and "frees" them, is devastating.

This is another thing that boggles my mind, the idea of doing repeated UNDERWATER SWIMMING SCENES on stage. Don't they know that's crazy?

[connielane]

Oh, I forgot we see him a bit in the underwater scene! As I recall, there's only one *fully* underwater scene, but it is spectacular. There are a couple of scenes on the *surface* of the lake, but that's done very differently.