If the latest information released about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them wasn’t enough to satiate your Harry Potter hunger, then get ready for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, set to hit London’s West End with previews as soon as June next year.
We last left Harry and the Potter family nineteen years after the conclusion of the Second Wizarding War and were promised that ‘all was well’. We soon will find out if this held true for long. The play will pick up where the epilogue left off and follow Mr. Potter, husband and father of three, as he navigates his career as an overworked Ministry of Magic employee, as well as his middle child, Albus Severus, as he attempts to manage the burden of his family’s legacy. The official synopsis warns us that, as the past and present collide, the pair will learn ‘the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places’.
According to J.K. Rowling, no medium would be as appropriate for the latest Potter tale as the stage. She insists we’ll be experiencing an entirely new story, split across two shows. For a complete experience of the production, you’ll either have to see both parts on the same day, or at least within the same week.
Screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne, in collaboration with Rowling, will author the play, with musical support from Imogen Heap. Tony award winner John Tiffany will direct a yet-to-be-announced cast of over 30.
Pre-sale tickets for the production were snapped up faster than you can say Petrificus Totalus and the run, originally scheduled to finish 18 September 2016 has already been extended an extra eight months to 27 May 2017. Tickets can be purchased here, but if you miss out, you better start saving those galleons because ticket resale agencies are already selling seats for as much as $6,000 AUD.
The show’s timing is also rather fitting: it picks up nineteen years after Voldemort’s demise, and premieres almost nineteen years to the day since Rowling published the first of the Potter books. Coincidence, or strategic plan? We’ll leave that one to the conspiracy theorists. All we mere Muggles (or No-Maj, as we’ve now learned to call our non-magical American friends) can say is that we hope there’s another nineteen years of magic ahead!
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I & II
Palace Theatre, London
World Premiere 30 July 2016
Find out more here or check out Pottermore!
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