Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

[Everlong]

Anybody else read this godawful mess of a play yet? I know @Daz has.

It's legitimately one of the worst things I've read in a long time. Can't believe Rowling greenlighted it.

[Daz]

It picked up a little bit during the first half of Act Two. There was a nice scene with Malfoy and his son, and a good scene with Harry and Draco late on, but other than that, it was pretty dreadful. Plot literally devolves into the Terminator late on. That's not to say there aren't good ideas in it. Just poor execution in the writing.

Wasn't overly impressed with most of the dialogue and characterisation. Lots of "remember when..." sort of exposition to fill in rather expansive backstory. Some really bad plotting, relying on heavy handed setups for very easily telegraphed payoffs a whole play later. Ron is pretty much useless throughout and everything he does undermines what his character was about in the books. I also have no idea why the two main characters in Albus and Scorpius Malfoy weren't joined by Rose for their so called adventure, if only to recapture the Harry/Ron/Hermione dynamic. Felt like a missed opportunity.

It is only a "rehearsal" script they've published, so you would hope they've worked out a lot of the kinks and smoothed things out for actual performances. Otherwise, it's gonna take a lot of fantastic performances, gimmicks and good staging to overcome bad writing. I guess it achieved it's purpose though, because I want to see the play more than ever, so I can find out if it's as bad as it is on the page.

I am now considering a career as a playwright, cause the bar would appear to be quite low.

[Hanley!]

I briefly picked up a copy in the bookshop and read a line or two. Dialogue was horrible, though I imagine the dialogue would have been almost as bad if the original Harry Potter books had been written out in play form too.

Wasn't too keen on checking it out after that.