It is probably hyperbole. Like when you say '' I've read this book million times!''

And if you want to be literal, it is possible that she has other jobs then being trolley witch for Hogwarts train. If it indeed works only four times a year ( counting holidays), pay would have to be enormous if she lived only off that. She probably works in some bakery in Diagon Alley, which then makes six million pasties possible ( she worked on Hogwarts Express 190 years, and we have no idea how old she was when she was employed).

 

So, I went to see the play this week. Will try to articulate my thoughts about it, though they're a bit muddled.

Firstly, I would like to reiterate how spectacular the play is as a performance. The magical tricks are amazing, from the time travel effect, which causes the entire room to look like it's wobbling, pillars and all, to the giant gouts of flame shot across the stage in the finale, to the transfiguration/polyjuice scenes. Some of the tricks were very cleverly done, such as the centaur Bane, who they depicted by having one person standing in front of the other, with the space between them and the person behind in shadow so that you could only see the front person and rear legs. The dementors, who were on wires floating around the theatre, including over the audience and all the way up to the balcony, were also great. But the best effect had to be the portraits, which were done by having the frame hanging in the air and the actor standing behind them, with their legs in shadow so you could only see the part of their body within the frame. Sounds simple, but the way they were lit somehow gave them a real appearance of two-dimensionality.

Less talked about but also impressive, I thought, were the "scene setting" montages. Basically whenever they introduce a new location, the scene is set by a kind of dance piece of wizards dressed in costume typical of that location, often doubling up as stage hands setting up the props for the scene. The best of these was the opening of Part 2, in which you're introduced to the dystopian Voldemort-run world. The music in that section was great, and the wizards marching around in the dance were wearing these militaristic kind of robes that were vaguely reminiscent of (but not directly referential to) the Nazis.

The acting was also pretty good in general. The big surprise of the play on that front were Scorpius, who was genuinely hilarious, and Delphi, who was pretty charismatic (and also pretty pretty).

So those are my thoughts on the play qua play. Now for thoughts about the content.

Overall, many of my fears were not borne out. I had read all the spoilers before the play, and had many problems with what I had read. But for a lot of them, the way they were presented redeemed them in my eyes.

For example, Albus and Scorpius' decision to save Cedric, as opposed to doing any number of other things with the time turner. That didn't make sense to me, pre-play. But the way it's done makes it work. It's clearly a knee-jerk decision Albus makes, a moment of rebellion. It's not about saving Cedric at all, it's about defying Harry (something Scorpius explicitly notes later on in the play).

Another gripe I had pre-play was the characterisation of Harry (in particular as a bad father). But the play as presented rather normalises this. For a start, it's clear that a lot of Harry's apparent bad fatherhood is just Albus being a typical angsty teenager over not much. That makes Albus an annoying character, but no more so than Harry was sometimes in OotP. And it's again explicitly noted in the play. There's a scene where Scorpius and Albus have an argument which essentially revolves around Albus' level of self-absorbion and how he's constantly moaning about how terrible it is to be Harry's son, when actually he has it pretty good compared to people who have real problems (like Scorpius, whose mother died). And the whole blanket scene, which sounded absurd in abstract, makes sense. It's not that it's Harry's blanket, it's that it was Lily's, and thus a family heirloom, one of the few Harry owns. Finally, a lot of the problems with the Harry-Albus relationship are redeemed by the resolution.

The time travel was another problem I had with the story. But this is something that again works well as presented. People have in general become too hung up on the fact that the time travel device is called a time turner but it doesn't work as time turners do in PoA. But it's made very clear in the play that it's a new design of time turner made by a different person from the originals, for a different purpose, with different mechanics. And it's a prototype. I actually quite like this because it goes against the fanon idea that the wizarding world is static. It's basically a new form of time travel magic only vaguely related to the time turners we saw before. That said, it does still have some problems, such as its selective effect on people's memories of the previous timeline, and with inconsistency in the time at which the effects of the time travel materialise. Inconsistencies which are clearly made for the convenience of the story.

And that brings me to a very important point, which is the way in which many of the plot and setting decisions are made to suit the format of it being a play. JK Rowling has said that it's a story that could only be told in theatre, and she's completely right. A similar story could be told as a book, but many scenes would be different.

A perfect example is Harry's duel with Draco. Pre-play, I had a problem with this: Harry is by this point a seasoned Auror, the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, and not even a paper-pusher, as the story has been keen to emphasise that Harry neglects his paperwork in favour of going on missions. So by all logic, Harry should beat Draco relatively easily. They were roughly equals at school, and now Harry has a ton of extra experience and training that Draco does not. But it's a draw, with Draco coming out slightly the better.

That rankled me when I first heard of it, but once again the way the play presents it makes it clear that the outcome of the duel has been determined by the format as a play. Essentially the purpose of the duel is to be a visual spectacular for the audience, a chance for them to show off their acting, stagecraft and clever visual effects. In a realistic duel, they would be casting/blocking/shielding simultaneously, and the first person to have been hit by a spell would have surely lost the duel. But in this, each of Harry and Draco get hit by several spells. They basically take turns to cast jinxes on each other, then pause to let the audience enjoy the effect of each spell as it hits. When Harry hits Draco with Tarantallegra (the dancing jinx), for example, he doesn't take advantage of Draco's distraction to finish the duel with a stunning spell or similar. No, he sits back, lets the audience enjoy the dancing, before Draco cancels the spell and takes his turn to hit Harry with a spell of his own.

This is just one example of a phenomenon you see throughout the play: examples of the content of the story being driven by a desire to take advantage of the format of a play.

That makes its canon status awkward, however. JK Rowling has said she considers Cursed Child to be the 8th Harry Potter story, a continuation of the main series, and thus canonical. How can this be reconciled with so many of its elements being unique to its format and therefore clashing with the main series? The 7 HP books are largely designed to be taken seriously. Duels are genuine fights determined by who is better at magic, in which the characters try with all their ability to win. The play is not designed to be taken nearly as seriously, with so much of it there for pure entertainment purposes. In tone, it feels like a Christmas special.

I can think of a couple of solutions. The first is to consider the play canon in overview but not specifics. So stuff like who cast which spell when would not be canon, but the fact that Harry and Draco had an inconclusive duel interrupted by Ginny would be. The problem with this is the arbitrary line between specifics and generalities. The second solution, and the one I favour, is to view this as "play canon", which is a kind of separate continuity. It's still canon, yes, but it's distinguished from pure book canon. Rather like Star Trek canon before and after the reboot. The third solution is to try to reconcile the play and the books but bearing in mind the way the format of the play has influenced it and trying to discount those elements. This is perhaps similar to how sometimes Philosopher's Stone canon is at odds with the later 6 books (no apparition, Hagrid could fly, curses needed eye contact) because JKR had yet to settle on some of the world building elements and the tone.

But in the end, there was just one element of the story that I found unforgivable, and that was making Delphi Voldemort's daughter. Delphi is actually a pretty great character. As I said above, she's charismatic and the way she manipulates Albus is fun to watch. I think the play would have been just fine if she had been Bellatrix's daughter by Rodolphus rather than Voldemort. There are just so many problems with making her Voldemort's daughter. Firstly, Voldemort believed himself immortal and was fully confident in that fact. He didn't need an heir for any pragmatic purpose. Secondly Voldemort had no sentimentality so he surely wouldn't want a child for any reason other than pragmatism. Thirdly, it ruins the Voldemort-Bellatrix dynamic of her being obsessed with him but him feeling nothing in return and using her feelings. Fourthly it gives Voldemort a sexual identity when he always seemed so inhuman and thus asexual in the books. Fifthly it undermines the idea that wizards are not determined by their birth by having Voldemort's daughter be not only evil but also extremely talented at magic like he was. It also undermines Voldemort's special status if other dark wizards quickly equal his level of threat just decades after he died. And last but not least, it's just so cliche, so predictable, for the new villain to be the heir of the old.

 

Overall I enjoyed it about as much as I enjoy the early HP books. Which is to say not as much as books 4 and 5, but more than books 6 and 7.

I can understand why people have some issues with it, and yes it could have been better written. But its not a book, its a play. A lot of the context you'd get in a book, you don't get in this.

I think the basic plot was an ok concept. Nothing earth shattering, but decent. The execution was broadly enjoyable. There were specific things that annoyed me at different points, but there are always going to be.

It was much better than I thought it was going to be, so I'm perfectly happy with how it turned out.

 

I liked it. In terms of Delphi, I found it curious that the only proof we have that Delphi is Voldemort's daughter is that Rodolphus told her so years after who knows where she was. So I don't know that we have proof of anything, or even whether Voldemort knew about it. I can see ways around it. The time travel nonsense was the sort of thing I like, so I enjoyed it. I don't really think the memories are inconsistent - the only time people "remembered" anything was the first iteration, where it was close enough that they also were planning to time travel.

 

Huh, if what Jeram says is true then it'd be interesting to see what the eventual AU!CCs make of a likely insane man claiming she's an heir with no actual proof an everyone else just assuming its true. There goes the noble heir cliche. To be fair if 11 years went by an his reputation made everyone believe he's still alive likely because his death eaters heard his immortality claims. Having a notorious death eater support rumors of him having an evil kid... Also who knows Voldemort an Bellatrix both dark art users a kid everyone calls Cursed is naturally evil even with an unknown childhood cursed child could be literal as in She's the result of a freaky baby that voldemort was in book 4

 

Delphi speaks in parseltongue towards the end of the play.

http://imgur.com/SARgaGR

Unless Voldemort made another living horcrux before his death, I think it's pretty solid evidence that Delphi is Voldemort's daughter. Voldemort likely knew about it as well. Delphi was born before Voldemort and Bellatrix's deaths, and she was fanatically loyal to him. I doubt she kept much from him.

 

In response I'd say that while being a parselmouth makes it very likely that Delphi is Voldemort's daughter it doesn't mean that it's certain. Their where definitely more parselmouths than those directly related to Slytherin and it's also reasonable to assume that you could be born with the ability (albeit highly unlikely).

 

For me Cursed Child was a joke... There was absolutely nothing I liked about it. Ridiculous plot, where everything just doesn't make any sense - from canon (but really occ) chracters to the time turner (it was the one thing I was afraid of being used as a part of the plotline) and the consequences of it. It is a complete opposition to what we have learned about it from POA... I really felt like I was reading a fanfic. But what irked the most was the characterization of Harry - a father neglecting his son who also poves himself incompetent to fight properly... A Head Auror, struggling against Malfoy?? It was so ridiculous I wanted to stop reading the script right there. Not to mention the lamiest culminating point ever (we are stronger together blah blah - cheap), pigeons - what the..? really?!

Delphi character for me was laughable... just appears out of nowhere and suddenly becomes the most powerful witch.

The script, the concept of it, has been written that way to suit the theater - it's obvious - to let the audience see the magic, to receive a few gasps from (Alternative World). I know the play must be amazing to watch on scene, but the plot itself was unacceptable for me.

Did we really need the whole "Voldemort-coming-to-life" thing? Harry Potter had so much potential, Voldemort wasn't really needed for the story to be enjoyable.