:::: One Part FANDOM RETROSPECTIVE, One Part ANALYSIS ::::
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play that premiered in London, 2016. It was met with praise by theatergoers and disdain, even hatred, by those who read the script. Today, there is a...
*pictured: Harry Potter in the Knight Bus as it slams to a stop, the momentum thrusting him forward, resulting in our hero smacking the windshield.
Narrative Voice
Adding to the feeling that we were not reading a Harry Potter book was the fact that Harry was a minor character in his own finale!
The book was deemed the 8th story of the series. It was titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. But by the second scene, fans had difficulty knowing where they were supposed to be moored. If the intention was to track the story of the kids, it should have been titled something like Albus and Scorpius and the Pathetic Baby Blanket.
As the play progressed, we could not pinpoint a single voice within the narrative in which we were meant to follow. We went from Albus as the focus, to Scorpius alone, to a combination of both, while constantly peppering in scenes from Harry and Company (now with arbitrary dream sequences!!). We even got a view from Hagrid's perspective near the end.
Motivation and Structure
The constant bouncing up and down between timelines, alternate realities, character groups, alternate characterization, real motivations, hidden motivations, and "Confunded" motivations felt like driving down a highway cratered with potholes. The structure was so dissimilar to what fans had always experienced, it was hard to follow and subverted the story Thorne, Tiffany, and JKR were trying to tell.
Genre
The play diverged from our expectations because, at its core, it's a different genre. This book is not a mystery, like the seven Harry Potter novels. It's a time travel story set in the wizarding world.
Plot Devices
Rather than incorporating it as a discreet plot device to move the story along, the novelty of time travel overwhelms Cursed Child. Three-quarters of the script is devoted to the use of a Time-Turner and the pitfalls in doing so, resulting in the predictable dependency of a plot device to define every action and reaction from our characters. And a poor one at that, filled with a disturbing level of Deus ex machina that it might as well be in the subtitle.
Using time travel to alter the events of the book series is not only a betrayal to the main characters, events, and overall narrative, it's a hackneyed, cringeworthy, unoriginal cliché meant for stories that are not taking themselves very seriously.
Example: just the other night I read a chapter from Captain Underpants where time was reset, overwriting the events of the past and creating an alternate present that erased the hero entirely. That's how innovative Cursed Child is... And I was reading Captain Underpants to a three-year-old.
The concept of needing to repair the present because a time device brought on unexpected results is overused and tired (and not canon, but I'll get to that). In an attempt to bring us back to an era we recognized, to re-tell the story in a new light, they stomped through the world of Harry Potter like a toddler at the beach, kicking sand in people's faces and knocking over castles.
If you're going to write a time travel story, at least do a good job of it!
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