'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' is the play that followed the Harry Potter book series. It premiered on 30 July 2016. A book of the same name containing the script of the play was released on 31 July 2016 on the character Harry Potter’s birthday.
The story of this play follows from the point the last installment of the book series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ left off, where, in the epilogue, 19 years after the Second Wizarding War, Harry, Ginny, Hermione, and Ron are all accompanying their children to King’s Cross Station in London for them to board the Hogwarts Express.
J. K. Rowling claimed when she had written the last book of the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows‘ that the story ends there. However, she was also considering writing the last lines of the book in the epilogue with some ambiguity claiming that Harry’s scar hurt, but instead decided to go with the lines “The scar had not pained Harry for 19 years. All was well.”
In ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ the story picks up from the epilogue, and one day, Harry’s scar starts hurting again. J. K. Rowling collaborated on this play with Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne was the major playwright for this play.
J. K. Rowling has stated in interviews that she wanted to write ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ because it felt like an important story to tell, especially the part where Albus Severus Potter is the major new protagonist of this story. She claimed that she liked Albus Potter a lot and that being sent to Hogwarts with the names Albus and Severus with the surname Potter felt like a very huge responsibility to carry and live up to, and that story needed to be told. Furthermore, it is very refreshing to hear a Harry Potter story where Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and even Draco have to take on roles of responsibility.
The most obvious books related to ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ are all the Harry Potter books from the series. However, ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is certainly more closely related to ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.’ The major connection between ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ is that they are connected through the epilogue and are chronologically consecutive. Furthermore, a lot of important details are discussed in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, like Snape being a double agent, Dumbledore’s plan to finally vanquish Voldemort, and the prophecy made by Sybill Trelawney are details from the plot of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
This play is also related closely to ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ because the plot consists of time travel, and the characters of the play, Albus and Scorpius, frequently go back in time to the events that occur during the Triwizard Tournament in an attempt to save Cedric Diggory from dying. Therefore, a lot of events that occur in ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ feature in this play, and all three of the Triwizard Tournament tasks are portrayed in this play.
The performance of the play ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ in the Palace Theatre, London, and later on Broadway and West End, garnered positive acclaim both from audiences and critics alike. It was lauded for its witty humor and fresh take on the wizarding world. Furthermore, the younger generation of characters like Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy was well-liked by the audiences.
The book that was published under the same name was also received well but had mixed opinions among fans of the beloved book series. While many readers really liked the character Scorpius and even Albus Potter and the original but now grown characters, several readers found the plot and setting of the novel very plain and unappealing. The trope of Time Travel was seen as a cliché by many readers because it has been used so frequently in the genre of science fiction and fantasy literature.
It won several awards, including the Evening Standard Theatre Award of 2016 in several categories and also the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award in the same year. It won the Laurence Olivier Award in 2017 in several categories, and its Broadway performance also garnered the Tony Awards in 2018.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is a very interesting and engrossing play for some fans of the Harry Potter universe, but many purists see it as a not so satisfying addition to a much-beloved book series.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is a play with a lot of quotable lines, just like the rest of the Harry Potter books.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is known for balancing the nostalgia with the nuance of this Harry Potter story with its wide variety of characters some of whom readers are familiar with and others who are completely new and unknown to readers.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ has several interesting themes including friendship, love, betrayal and legacy that are portrayed very accurately in it.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is a standalone play written by Jack Thorne in collaboration with John Tiffany and J. K. Rowling herself. It is directly related to the Harry Potter book series and takes off from the epilogue of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.