J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany
I am disappointed and intrigued.
Let’s start with the disappointment: First, that JK Rowling managed to create a couple characters with truly excellent chemistry, and then aggressively refused to let it actually happen. (And here is where I say that I’m disappointed but not surprised, because she isn’t exactly the most woke about queer representation.)
Secondly, that this is such a weird development for some of the characters. What’s going on with Ron? Ron is a complex and interesting character, who the movies didn’t do justice, and got turned into something barely more than comic relief in Cursed Child.
(And here’s where I throw the spoiler warning; the play-and-book have only been out for three years, and if you’re like me, that’s not enough time to guarantee you know how it goes.)
And thirdly, that this completely breaks some of the rules the original series had established. (Though, admittedly, Fantastic Beasts did that first — apparently magic in the ‘30s was a couple of orders of magnitude more powerful? Why?) In the books, time travel had rules that made sense. Your can’t cause a paradox, because you’ve already time traveled. Here, though, suddenly we care about the grandfather paradox?
And yet, I’m still intrigued. Because Albus and Scorpius are fun together. Because it’s another look into the magical world that was the shared childhood of my generation. Because it’s written as a play, and I cannot fathom how they would stage some of this.
It’s an alright read, doesn’t take too long, so if you’re at all interested, give it a go. And if you’ve got a chance to see the actual play… that’s probably worth the time, just to see the staging.
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