The final curtain came down on the original two-part production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on 20 September, ending a decade-long West End phenomenon. In under three weeks, a new one-part version must be ready to take its place. Some of the cast have performed the two-parter for years; many others, including the two young leads, have only just joined them. This is their only full week together in the rehearsal room.
A streamlined Hogwarts Express
The two shows’ combined six-hour running time is becoming three: producer Sonia Friedman compares it to swapping a Bentley for a Ferrari. As the company work out their choreographed positions using the tape marking the floor, it’s clear that the play is compromising none of its signature theatricality.
“It’s a very physical show,” says movement director Nuno Silva. “It’s the Hogwarts Express – it doesn’t stop at Croydon.” The annual casting process is long and rigorous precisely because actors need to know how much is expected of them when they get the role. Even so, says associate director Nicola Samer, the move to a one-parter is a big shift. “It’s going to require a lot of endurance.”
Jonathan Bulleid, who teaches the cast the magic they’ll perform, is relishing the opportunity to try out new tricks. He has worked across seven cast changes already, and until now his job has been “repetition, not creativity”. “But with the one-parter there are new bits coming in that we get to play with for the first time … and everything is happening at speed. So it’s even more mind-blowing than it was originally.”
Rethinking every scene
There are new emotional beats, too. David Ricardo-Pearce, who has played Harry for the past three years, is asking if he can play a certain scene a little less combatively than before. Learning a new script while still performing the old one has, he admits, been “quite confusing” on occasion. “But it’s also exciting because you have to rethink every single scene, and reinvestigate how you’re going to play the character.”
It is testament to writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany that Cursed Child so quickly became canon among fans. Some are upset with the upcoming change – but then, even Tiffany has admitted that he and Thorne had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to rework a script they had spent so much time perfecting.
“That was the reflex reaction,” he says now. The two-part production transferred to Broadway in 2018, and the producers were soon considering a shorter version that could work elsewhere. Tiffany says he felt “very protective” of Thorne until the pair spoke to their friend Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the Royal Court. “She was, like, get over yourselves and just do it. It’ll make it cheaper and more accessible for audiences. And that’s the thing that I’m most proud of, that some people will come that couldn’t afford to see it before.”
More poetic, more cinematic
For Thorne, maintaining the complexity and depth of the original was vital. “John and the producers were very, very clear that if we didn’t, we don’t do this. And hearing that was actually very freeing – you’re not writing with an axe over your head.” Entire sequences, and a number of cherished characters, were lost in the process. “Even though I was tempted to say, ‘Just act faster’, ultimately that doesn’t work,” says Tiffany. “Every word has to earn its place. It becomes more poetic.”
The resultant story focuses less on Harry Potter himself, and more tightly on the adventure of his son, and his son’s best friend. It reopened on Broadway after Covid at three-and-a-half hours: a three-hour version has since replaced it. “That one actually works better,” says Tiffany. “Otherwise kids get too restless, they need a wee. I need a wee.” The production has played in San Francisco, Melbourne, Toronto and Hamburg, and is still running in five cities including Amsterdam and Tokyo. More than 14 million people have seen Cursed Child worldwide.
London, however, is still considered the flagship – not least because the workings of the Palace Theatre allow for stage effects (from shooting flames to a hydraulic water tank) that can’t easily be included elsewhere. Audiences have also changed considerably over the course of the 10-year run. “This version is much more cinematic,” says Silva. “So I think for a new audience that is used to phones and iPads, this is for them.”
Friedman and her fellow producer Colin Callender have both spoken of their pride that Cursed Child has become an “entry point” to the performing arts for many thousands of people (the London production has been seen by more than 300,000 first-time theatregoers since 2016). “It’s part of my responsibility to ensure that theatre has future generations,” says Friedman. “And we know that people who have seen Harry Potter have then gone on to see other plays – not musicals, but Tom Stoppard, or Jez Butterworth.”
She is unapologetic about the move to a one-part show. “The cost of living has gone up 30-40% since the pandemic. The only way we could continue to run it in a two-parter would be by charging an amount in tickets that was unaffordable and inaccessible.” Friedman points out that other two-part plays – such as the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby or Stephen Daldry’s production of The Inheritance – have never run for more than a few months. Cursed Child’s record 10th year will probably never be neared, let alone broken.
The one-parter, of course, is already a proven success. In Tokyo, audience members show up in home-crafted costumes and headdresses. On Broadway, there are passionate ovations each night as Tom Felton – who played Draco Malfoy in the films – makes his entrance. Felton’s run as the grown-up Draco comes to an end in the New Year, when Rupert Grint will step on stage in the character of Ron Weasley once more. Might the London show one day have actors from the films play their grown-up versions on Shaftesbury Avenue? “If they wanted to, I would love it,” says Tiffany. “Tom first had his eye on London – but Broadway is Broadway, the wages are bigger, and it’s very, very attractive.”
In the final few moments of rehearsal, a pair of giant staircases are wheeled to the middle of the floor. Hogwarts’ moving staircases play a pivotal role in Steven Hoggett’s original choreography, and remain one of Thorne’s favourite elements. “Halfway through the play there’s a scene we call the staircase ballet, and originally there was quite a lot of dialogue there. One day John came and sat down beside me and went, I think the images speak better than the words, don’t they? And he was totally right. The fact that my favourite bit of the play is wordless, I always find quite amusing. Even if we did a five-minute version of Harry Potter, that would still be there.” The one-part production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is at the Palace theatre, London, from 9 October until 27 June.
