The Cursed Play and the death of subtlety

That must be some production in London to be getting all those rave reviews.

Because, having now read the "Special Rehearsal Edition Script" of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Parts 1 and 2), I can tell you: it's a really bad play.

Worse still, it's bad Harry Potter.

I had high hopes for The Cursed Play, looking forward to seeing what J.K. Rowling, who (to my mind) is a brilliant, masterful writer of prose, would do with a Harry Potter script. Could she translate her remarkable gifts into this very different style of writing?

But this play was not written by Rowling: it was written by Jack Thorne, "based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany & Jack Thorne", according to the new book's cover.

What exactly does that mean? It's clear that J.K. has endorsed The Cursed Play -- she promotes it every chance she gets -- but how much input did she really have in the its writing?

From the quality of the written script, I would say, "Not much".

The plot is as complicated and silly as they come. Albus makes friends with Scorpius, two loners who find each other as they try to survive their first year at Hogwarts, each struggling under the weight of his real or suspected lineage.

Albus hates his father (though we're never sure exactly why) and so, when he overhears Harry Potter refuse old Amos Diggory's request that he use a newly discovered Time Turner to go back to the Tri-Wizard Tournament and save Amos' son Cedric, Albus decides that he and Scorpius must steal the Time Turner, save Cedric and put his father forever in his place.

All kinds of mayhem ensues, including multiple incursions into the past, the creation of several alternate (and successively darker) timelines, extensive dream sequences, murder, deceit, and the inevitable return of Lord Voldemort.

Thorne manages to introduce or mention just about every character of any stature from the original seven Harry Potter novels, to revisit location after location from those books and to raise for discussion most of the major emotional themes Rowling wove so carefully into her original story.

It's like really bad fan fiction. Or like a rabid Potter fan wrote down every character, location and theme they could think of, threw the list at the playwright and said: "Write a play that mentions every one of these, no matter how long and convoluted it becomes." And Thorne seems to have accepted that challenge as ranking in importance above any need to structure the plot, for example.

Worse still, Thorne's dialogue is remarkably bland and banal. If he isn't copying directly (or at least, semi-directly, with whatever revisions he sees fit to make) from the books themselves, Thorne is typing out long-winded, white-bread dialogue the voice and diction of which changes little from character to character and which often has characters displaying remarkable, unbelievable levels of self-awareness.

Whereas Rowling managed to tailor her dialogue perfectly to her different characters, to create unique voices for each (using everything from word choice to the rhythm of their speech), Thorne uses a one-voice-fits-all kind of approach. I guess he figures he should leave it to the actors to give his dialogue personality. To some extent, that approach makes sense but it doesn't excuse the absolute lack of personality in the dialogue.

I can imagine that the stage production of the play is fantastic. The budget must be enormous to create underwater scenes, dream sequences, wand duels and all kinds of magical effects. Add to that a total of 75 scenes across four acts and a cast of more than 30 actors playing uncountable numbers of roles.

What really worries me, however, is that The Cursed Play does not even seem to me to be good Harry Potter.

For example, isn't it well established that no witch or wizard could even see the Potters' home in Godric's Hollow while James and Lily were still alive unless they had been told where it is by the Secret Keeper, on account of Dumbledore's powerful Fidelius Charm? So how do Scorpius and Albus look in its windows when they arrive to intercept Delphi?

And isn't it also well established that Polyjuice Potion takes months to brew? If so, then how do Scorpius, Albus and Delphi manage to get some for their highly derivative incursion into the Ministry? And why do they ever consider using it in Godric's Hollow?

And, although never clear, isn't it true that Harry's scar hurt because 1) he had a bit of Voldemort's soul inside him and 2) Voldemort was either nearby or really emotional? So how come Harry's scar hurts in this book when the bit of soul is gone and Voldemort is long dead and nowhere near?

And why does the transfiguration of Harry wear off?

Those are small questions. Even more problematic in my mind are the several scenes of dialogue in which characters attempt to address moral, philosophical or emotional questions left hanging in the original novels. Particularly egregious among these is that awful scene in Act Four, Scene Four where Harry and Dumbledore (through the former headmaster's portrait) manage to say all the things that were left unsaid at the end of The Deathly Hallows and to pledge their eternal love for each other.

It's bad enough that anyone attempts to write a scene like this when Rowling went to such great lengths to create a lovely, balanced, strife-ridden, subtle, often unspoken relationship between the two major characters. It's worse when it's someone of the evidently limited talents of the current playwright.

Perhaps the greatest sin of The Cursed Play is that it puts the lovely subtlety of J.K. Rowling's original novels to a slow, agonizing death.

I'm not sure what's going on with Rowling. For a long time, she seemed prepared to leave Harry Potter behind, to view the seven original novels as perfect and complete. She turned her attentions (and prodigious talents) to other projects, including the creditable series of detective novels she penned under the name Richard Galbraith.

Now, she can't seem to leave Potter alone. We've got a new movie, this new play and, from what I saw when I picked up my copy at my local big-box bookstore, a veritable gift shop full of new Harry Potter paraphernalia, cheap plastic tidbits that years ago Rowling delighted in decrying.

Why is Hermione upset when she misses Charms?

A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about the trap that is time travel. It seems at first like a pretty fun and clever device: create a way for your characters to travel back and forth in time and then watch the fun ensue.

But, if you look at the concept too closely, if you explore the possible consequences of time travel on your narrative, you really might want to think twice before you employ it.

As much as I love The Prisoner of Azkaban -- it is, in fact, my favourite of both the books and the films -- I still believe that the introduction of the possibility of time travel to the Harry Potter universe  in this third novel is an strategic and dramatic error on the part of author.

The following passage from about two-thirds through the book jumped out at me recently as I listened to the Jim Dale audiobook version of The Prisoner:

Hermione was sitting at a table, fast asleep, her head resting on an open Arithmancy book. They [Ron and Harry] went to sit down on either side of her. Harry prodded her awake. 

'Wh-what?' said Hermione, waking with a start, and staring wildly around. 'Is it time to go? W-which lesson have we got now?' 

'Divination, but it's not for another twenty minutes,' said Harry. 'Hermione, why didn't you come to Charms?' 

'What? Oh no!' Hermione squeaked. 'I forgot to go to Charms!'

Hermione laments this mistake for some time, to the point where she brings it up later, having found out that Cheering Charms might just be on the exam.

"So what?" you ask. "It's a fun scene. It's neat to see Hermione not quite in control for once!"

And yes, it is an interestingly little scene, intended both to show Hermione in a more vulnerable situation and to pique our interest: just what is up with our favourite witch?

But think about it a little more deeply. We learn later that Hermione is in possession of a time turner, which permits her to travel back in time to attend several classes that are scheduled at the same time. She has been using it all year. As we learn at the start of term, she uses it on one day each week so that she can attend Divination at 9 a.m., then go back in time to attend Muggle Studies at 9 a.m., then travel back in time again to attend Arithmancy, again at 9 a.m.

Once she learns she has missed Charms class in this scene, why doesn't she just excuse herself, travel back in time and attend the class? Rather than freaking out and feeling unprepared for the exam, why not use the time turner, as she has done all year, to travel back and go to Charms?

And then you have to ask yourself: why is Hermione so tired? With the time turner, she could easily travel back in time once she's finished her homework each evening in order to go to bed at an appropriate hour so that she is well rested for the next day.

Say she studies until 3 a.m.. Fine. At 3 a.m., she spins the time turner six times, goes back to 9 p.m., and goes to bed. A good night's sleep follows and all is well!

Of course, if Hermione were to go just that, if she were to re-live an average of eight hours every day in order to keep up with her classes, her homework and her sleep, she would end up significantly older (about four months older) than the others at the end of the school year. Would that make a difference in their lives? Would the others notice?

I'm not sure but, because of the introduction of time travel, these are questions that have to be asked.

And they are just minor questions, raised by the brief scene reproduced above. As I've mentioned before, why doesn't Hermione go back in time far enough to stop Voldemort in the first place? Or at least to the point where Peter Pettigrew/Scabbers is easy to catch?

Time travel drives me crazy, dramatically

I hate time travel in stories.

Why?

Because, if the characters in the story can travel through time, it means that nothing matters. That any major plot development can be undone. That any death can be circumvented.

Simply by having a character travel back in time and avoid the development, stop the death from happening.

The movie Star Trek: Generations is a case in point. In that film, the writers establish that any character who enters a particular zone (called the "Nexus") can choose to leave the Nexus again at any point in time and space.

Great.

When Captain Picard enters the Nexus, therefore, he has the ability to go as far back in time as he wants and change history. Nothing that has happened in the past is therefore set in stone. He can go as far back as he wants and CHANGE EVERYTHING bad that's happened.

Once that fact is established, the plot loses all sense of suspense. There is nothing at stake anymore.

And then Picard chooses to emerge from the Nexus just in time to stop the bad guy from destroying an innocent planet -- chooses that moment rather some earlier moment where he could, for example, stop his beloved brother and nephew from dying in a fire (a major plot point earlier in the movie), then block the Klingons from interfering and then find the bad guy and arrest him before he can do any harm.

Picard's decision makes no sense. In the context of the reality established by the movie, Picard (the film's hero) is, in fact, a fool.

So when J.K. Rowling introduced the possibility of time travel in book three of the Harry Potter collection, I cringed. Really and truly I did. She had fallen into the trap. Nothing else could possibly matter if characters can travel back in time. Nothing bad that happens is ever permanent.

To her credit, Rowling makes excellent use of the time-travel trap in The Prisoner of Azkaban by having her characters travel back in time to save Sirius and Buckbeak.

She actually does it really well. It's a surprisingly exciting read and one of my favourites of the seven novels.

But it begs the Picard question. If they can control how far back in time she travels simply by spinning the Time Turner more or less times, why does Dumbledore not send them back far enough to allow Ron to capture Scabbers, lock him in a box and then use him to help clear Sirius' name without all the drama?

Or send them back 14 or more years to stop Voldemort before he really got started? If Voldemort is stopped before he kills Harry's parents, none of the terrible things that followed upon those murders would have happened. No one would have suffered.

In fact, why didn't Dumbledore himself go back in time right after he realized Tom Riddle was going to be a royal pain in the bottom and put a stop to Riddle's shenanigans?

Sure, we fans can invent all kinds of rules to avoid these questions: Time Turners can only take a person so far back in time and no more, for example. But Rowling doesn't make such rules clear in the book.

Now, in The Order of the Phoenix, Rowling tries to make this right. Or at least to remove time travel as an option that could be used to avoid the final battle of Hogwarts. She has all of the Time Turners destroyed in the Department of Mysteries (and allows us to develop a fan rule that no one alive is capable of making a new Time Turner).

Fine. Great. But I still think the introduction of the possibility of time travel in the magical world of Harry Potter serves to undermine the drama throughout the course of Harry's adventures. Rowling would have been better off not introducing it at all.

Even if it meant having to change the plot of the magnificent third book completely.

In a later blog entry, I'll talk about how I feel that Rowling's introduction of Felix Felicis, of the talking portraits in the Headmaster's office and of the idea of the Taboo also raises significant dramatic problems for these books.

It's about time. It's always about time...

I am on record (numerous times in fact) as to how much I like and admire Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I think it is one of the best of Rowling's seven HP novels and I look forward to reading it every time I pick it up.

But I have to admit, I really regret the fact that J.K. introduced time travel into her magical world.

I have felt the same about the introduction of time travel into all kinds of other wonderful works of fantasy and science fiction: time travel, if it is accessible and fairly easy, completely ruins the drama and introduces all kinds of problems with the story at hand.

In Rowling's third book, time travel allows the creation of a very exciting, interesting plot and a very creative resolution, to be sure. But...

1. If time travel is so dangerous and so strictly controlled by the Ministry, why is it made available to a 13-year-old girl who wants to overload on classes at school?

2. If time travel is so simple to perform, why does the Ministry not use it to avert any of the major disasters that take place in the Potter novels, like the rise of Voldemort, the death of Harry's parents, the murder of dozens of people by Peter Pettigrew, the escape of Sirius Black from Azkaban, the escape of Wormtail, the attack on the Department of Mysteries, the murder of Cedric Diggory, Voldemort's resurrection in the grave yard, Dumbledore's death, the final battle of Hogwarts and on and on and on?

3. If Hermione and Harry can go back three hours in time just by turning the time-turner three times, why not go back five, six, ten hours in time and catch Peter Pettigrew before all the drama begins?

4. Why, in the seventh book, when Harry seeks the Resurrection Stone in a desperate hope of seeing his parents again, does he not, instead, decide to go back in time to save his parents from death in the first place?

5. Why does Voldemort not steal a time-turner and go back in time to avoid his pivotal attack on the infant Harry?

When you introduce time travel, you introduce problems.

I also have to ask the question: why does Dumbledore send Harry and Hermione back in time to save Buckbeak and Sirius rather than simply going back himself? Surely, he would be much more likely to succeed than would these two underage wiz-kids.

As usual, I ask these questions with a smile on my face. These are small issues when compared to the strength of Rowling's creation.