As a huge, embarrassing Harry Potter nerd, I really wanted to like this play. Harry Potter was a huge part of my childhood, and I even have a tattoo of the Deathly Hallows, so when I heard we were getting a new Harry Potter story, I was thrilled. But, even with J.K. Rowling herself helping out, this story feels less like an authentic Potter story, and more like glorified fanfiction written by someone who knows almost nothing about the books.

Between the overwrought plot and the horribly out-of-character people, there’s almost nothing to praise here. This might sound confusing, but, even for a Harry Potter story, there’s too much magic. The reason we love Harry Potter isn’t because he has magical powers, it’s because the problems he’s dealing with are often distinctly relatable. It’s a story about a lonely, abandoned boy trying to find his place in the world, trying to understand death, trying to figure out how to lead and grow up and be an adult, trying to understand mundane things like schoolwork and relationships. In the end, like all good stories, Harry Potter is about what it means to be human. But, in The Cursed Child, it seems like the focus is more on how to deal with magic and magical villains than about anything human.

Granted, there is a lot in this play that didn’t translate well to the page, and the actors I’m sure do a great job of bringing these characters to life (and fixing much of the lifeless dialogue), so seeing this play live may still be enjoyable and worth it. On the page, however, the script is lackluster at best, and at worst is a blatant misinterpretation of the characters and world that were set up in the original series. For my fellow die-hard fans, if you want to buy this book to complete your Harry Potter bookshelf, by all means, go ahead. But don’t go into this story expecting to be dazzled the way that you were by the series. You will be disappointed.

PLOT: 2/10

CHARACTER: 2/10

WORLD BUILDING: 2/10

DIVERSITY: 3/10

FUN: 1/10

TOTAL SCORE: 10…out of 50. 20% = F

Head below for a more detailed review, but BEWARE OF SPOILERS

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SPOILER ALERT: I’m serious. If you care about this book being spoiled, turn back now.

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Ok, now let’s talk about my specific reasons for the ratings. I have a lot of opinions about this play, and not many of them are good. So let’s dig in.

PLOT: 2/10

My first issue is the plot. The plot of this play reads like “It’s a Wonderful Life” on magical crack. To be fair, I usually hate “Messing with Time” type plots anyway, so I was already a little biased. Let’s start with a brief(ish) summary of the book, because you may not have read it (good for you).

The book picks up during the 7^th book epilogue, where Harry’s son, Albus, is concerned about being placed in Slytherin. Harry says his famous line about how Albus is named after 2 former headmasters of Hogwarts, and one was a Slytherin, and he was one of the bravest men he ever knew. Albus gets on the train, and ends up sitting in a car with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Draco. Rose, Hermione and Ron’s daughter, is disgusted and leaves. We find out that there’s a rumor that Scorpius is actually the son of Voldemort, because it’s rumored that his mom went back in time and slept with Voldemort and then went FORWARD in time and is now very sickly after having Scorpius. Anyway, Albus gets sorted into Slytherin, but we never actually see the conversation he has with the Sorting Hat, it’s just WOOPS suddenly Slytherin.

Then we get…a…3 year montage? In a play? And suddenly Albus is older and is a snotty emo teen all of a sudden, hating Quidditch and complaining about his dad. And Harry found a prototype Time Turner, which prompts Amos Diggory (who is now hella old) to come find Harry and complain about how they should use the Time Turner to go back in time and save Cedric, which gives Albus a horrible idea. Albus also befriends Delphi Diggory, Amos’s niece who takes care of him.

Albus tells Scorpius about his terrible plan to steal the time turner and they try to escape the train, but are confronted by the Trolley Lady who is apparently an IMMORTAL TRAIN GUARDIAN (I wish I was kidding). She tries to stop them but they jump off anyway and manage to survive. Delphi finds them, they use polyjuice potion to turn into Ron, Harry and Hermione, sneak into the Ministry, and into Hermione’s office (since she is Minister of Magic). They find the time turner, go back in time, and try and stop Cedric from doing well in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament to stop him from winning the tournament at all. But when the go back to THEIR time, suddenly everything is a little different, and Albus is a Gryffindor, and Ron is married to Padma, and Hermione turns into a Snape-like Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

Having trouble following the plot yet? Just hang on, it somehow gets worse.

They realize this is all messed up, so they try to go back in time AGAIN to HUMILIATE Cedric into dropping out of the tournament after the 2^nd task (they enlarge his head and make him float up out of the water), but when they return to their time, Albus doesn’t exist because Harry was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, Cedric Diggory TURNED INTO A DEATH EATER, Umbridge is the Headmaster, Voldemort is in charge, Hogwarts has something called the “Blood Ball” on “Voldemort Day,” Snape is in charge of a secret underground resistance against Voldemort along with Ron and Hermione (who aren’t together), and Scorpius is apparently called the “Scorpion King” and is allegedly a really popular, really evil Death Eater. So Scorpius goes back in time AGAIN this time with Hermione, Ron, and Snape’s help, to stop Albus and Scorpius from stopping Cedric from doing well in the first task.

God I hate time loops.

They succeed, and everything is mostly back to normal, except now Harry is being a giant bully and trying to prevent Albus and Scorpius from seeing each other, because he thinks Scorpius is Bad News, so he has McGonagall literally watch them using the Marauder’s Map to prevent them from being together. But McGonagall is like “this is the stupidest thing, whatever,” and does her best to not follow that order. Scorpius reveals that he still has the Time Turner, so he and Albus sneak off to go destroy it. While in the forest, trying to figure out how to destroy the thing, Delphi shows up again, and reveals that SURPRISE she’s the secret daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. She then snaps the boys’ wands, murders a guy, takes them back in time to prevent Cedric from finishing the tournament with Harry, which would cause Voldemort to ultimately win the war. But Albus and Scorpius manage to thwart that plan, except Delphi then uses the time turner to go back even farther, to the night when Voldemort killed Harry’s parents, so she can kill Harry herself.

Albus and Scorpius figure out her plan, and manage to send a message through time, somehow, using Harry’s baby blanket (it’s too complicated to really explain…and also feels pretty…convenient and forced). So Harry, Ginny, Draco, Hermione and Ron go back in time using A DIFFERENT time turner that Draco had secretly hidden away, and they find Albus and Scorpius and plan how to stop Delphi. But then they realize Delphi wouldn’t be trying to kill Harry, she’d be trying to STOP Voldemort from killing Harry, but that needs to happen in order for the other events to all happen. So they decide to…pretend Harry is Voldemort, tricking Delphi, then they trap Delphi, but she tries to attack Albus and Harry and almost kills them, but they bind her and take her away, and then Harry has to watch his parents die across the street. Oh, and Albus wants to kill Delphi, but Harry says no, because they’re not murderers.

They go back to their time, and everything is normal, and Harry tries to be a better father, and takes Albus to visit Cedric’s grave, because that’s apparently a totally normal Father Son Bonding Time moment.

I promise, I tried to make that as brief as possible. There were just so many ridiculous things I couldn’t bear to leave out.

ANYWAY. I think you can probably see a lot of my problems with this plot. I went into this story thinking I was going to get a character-driven drama about what it’s like to be the “disappointing” son of a great man. That’s all the conflict you really need here, just the father/son drama between Albus and Harry, how they don’t understand each other, how it’s hard for them to accept each other, but in time they grow and learn and come to see the other side of things. It’s a classic story, set in a magical world, which is exactly what you want from a Harry Potter book.

Instead, what we got was an out-of-character mess full of time loops and direct contradictions. The story is so ludicrously over-complicated that it’s hard to really find the nuggets of humanity that exist within it. I’m sure the special effects they use in the live show are spectacular, but when you don’t have the visuals, you’re just left with this mess of a plot that only seems tangentially related to the original series. To make this story compelling, you do not need Voldemort (or Voldemort’s daughter) as a villain. You already have plenty of conflict. You don’t need all of the time turner stuff, the excessive magic, the alternate universes. You don’t need magic or time loops to learn how to communicate with your father/son. The plot is messy, overly complicated, and patently ridiculous.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the wreck of a plot, the plot twists that happen are predictable and often boring. I knew that Delphi was Voldemort’s daughter starting the second time she was in the play, because why else would she have just randomly appeared? The story kept mentioning that everyone thought Scorpius was secretly Voldemort’s son, so you knew pretty immediately that SOMEONE was related to good ol’ Voldy, and who better to fit that part than the mysterious, vaguely troublesome girl who is obsessed with going back in time? If I can call a plot twist almost 200 pages before it actually gets revealed, that’s pretty bad.

To be honest, I’m only giving this a 2/10 because it’s a Harry Potter story, and I’m a sentimental hack. A 2 out of 10 is being awfully generous.

CHARACTER: 2/10

Alright, time for my second big issue. The gross mischaracterization of my favorite literary characters. Let’s run through a brief list, shall we?

• Harry Potter at one point tells Albus that “I wish you weren’t my son.” I have a hard time believing that Harry would ever say something like that, out loud, to his son. Regardless of the bad father figures in his life (Dumbledore), Harry also had SEVERAL EXCELLENT ONES, including Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, and HAGRID, FOR GOD’S SAKE.
• Ron is for some reason running the Joke shop? And just seems kind of goofy and stupid? Occasionally he makes jokes, but they’re not funny, and he also doesn’t seem to display any of the character traits that made him so great in the books (his courage, how much he cared for his friends, his stubbornness…I could go on)
• Hermione is Minister for Magic, which is cool, but I’m not sure I got that vibe from her in the books. More importantly, apparently when you mess with time so bad that her and Ron don’t hook up, she becomes a bitter old Snape-like hag. Remember, girls, if you don’t get married, you end up being a miserable bitch!
• Cedric Diggory becomes a death eater? Are you SERIOUS? Cedric Diggory is a golden retriever, personified. Please.

Ginny is about the only one who seems moderately in character, which is nice to see, but…come on. They twisted the characters to fit the plot, instead of letting the characters push the plot forward. That’s sloppy writing, and something that is unacceptable when you’ve got a fanbase who has been so rabidly infatuated with your characters since they were children.

WORLD BUILDING: 2/10

As I’ve mentioned, there’s too much magic, and not enough actual world-building (or plot development, or character development, or…). How has Hogwarts changed in the years since we saw it last? How are things different under Hermione’s ministry? Where’s Neville? Luna? George? Any of the other Weasleys? I get that this is a play, it’s meant to be performed visually so we don’t get literal descriptions of world building, but there are plenty of ways to use dialogue and characters to convey world building. It’s exciting to be back at Hogwarts again, but it feels like the story is relying on the familiar setting to avoid having to do any actual world building.

Also…Blood Ball? Seriously? THAT’S the best you could come up with? Even 13-year-old, obsessed-with-vampires Caitlin would have found that a bit much. You literally couldn’t come up with ANYTHING better than that to call it? Yikes.

DIVERSITY: 3/10

I gave The Cursed Child a 3 here almost entirely because they cast Noma Dumezweni as Hermione, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Black women are so often left out of popular stories, and to take such a beloved character and validate the headcanons of so many black women and black girls who’ve wanted to see themselves reflected in one of their favorite characters for so long is an awesome thing to do. So for that, alone, I am endlessly grateful.

It’s also nice that Delphi, a woman, is a villain, and not in a “Seductress” way, but more in a secretive, clever, evil way, which is something we don’t see from women very often. If her character were more fleshed out, she could have added a lot to this play, but as it is, she just kind of pops up every now and again to be secretly evil, and apparently that’s enough for Albus to somehow develop feelings for her.

That’s another thing. Albus and Scorpius. I’ve never read a story where two characters are more obviously in love, but the story continuously tries to squash that in the most obvious, boring ways possible. We’re supposed to understand that Scorpius is in love with Rose, a girl who wants nothing to do with him and actively dislikes him, and we’re just supposed to accept that Albus has romantic feelings for Delphi, a girl he’s talked to a total of 4 times. Meanwhile, Albus and Scorpius are only happy together, miserable when apart, literally cry when they’re not allowed to see each other, not to mention that they hug each other several times, and each time they point out the physical contact, drawing attention to it. How much more interesting could this story have been if Albus and Scorpius were also struggling with their feelings for each other, on top of struggling to find their place at Hogwarts, struggling to please their fathers?

I do think we need more male friendships in stories where they share emotions and aren’t just Bros all the time, but this relationship was not written like a friendship. Friendships are valid and important, to be sure, but how wonderful would it have been to have an openly gay love story in the midst of a Harry Potter story?

Often, when you’re writing a story, you’ll find that the story knows more than you do, and it will seem to almost write itself. That nearly happened here in The Cursed Child, but instead Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne tried to smother that part of the story, tried to bury it under clumsy, heterosexual feelings that were never explored enough to seem plausible.

FUN: 1/10

And finally…fun. You would hope that a Harry Potter story would be fun, right? It’s full of magic and wizards and wish fulfillment, magical creatures and broomsticks and pictures that move. It’s every kids dream. There’s a reason there’s a whole theme park based on this series.

The Cursed Child is not fun. The plot twists are obvious and boring, the characters are confusing and messy, the world building is non-existent, and the one redeeming thing, the beautiful relationship that grows between Scorpius and Albus, is trampled by bizarre, under-developed girls who barely have any time in the play and who are obviously disinterested in both boys. We learn nothing new about the wizarding world (other than the fact that Harry is apparently a terrible father), we don’t get to see any of the characters we love develop or grow in any way…there’s just so much in this story that isn’t done well that I’m having a hard time finding redeeming qualities, to be honest.

It was a quick read, I’ll give it that. And fast-paced, to an extent. But the overwhelming issues made it difficult to get through without being bored or actively disinterested.

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So, there you have it folks. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is an outright mess, and while I’m sure the actors do a fine job with the material, the play itself is so weak that I don’t even think Sir Ian McKellen himself could have saved this.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts! I’m obviously very biased, as I feel so betrayed by this book as a life-long Harry Potter fan, so I’m interested to hear any less-negative opinions (but also feel free to reaffirm my opinions. I’m a fan of that too).

You can also contact me via Twitter at LiterologyBlog.

Tune in next week, when we’ll be diving into A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab, where I will be MUCH less negative and much more prone to squealing.

Thanks for reading!

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