Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play release

[fdsfd]

The Cursed Child

Its finally here! I still haven't read the whole thing through, I've just been flipping between pages and scenes trying to disbelieve my lying eyes that this garbage fire is real.

My first impression of the play is how bad the writing is. I mean JK did have a spark, once upon a time, but this writing is just shoddy. Borderline unreadable. The characters genuinely come off as trite, sound-bite spitting idiots. For all the money that went into the production, characterisation (as well as an editor) was an unaffordable luxury. Cardboard so flimsy I genuinely have to wonder if actual people put these actual words in their actual mouths on a real stage. Honestly, if I went to see this thing in London I'd have to go up on the stage and flick the actors to see whether or not they fell over. At least they're being paid not to die of embarrassment for bringing this thing to life.

Just to reassure myself that a plot this bad is conveyed through writing this awful, would the comm mind if I put a scene by scene commentary here? The writing is so bad that I need somebody else to tell me that they're seeing the same words on the same pages. Please. Is that all right? Or am I being a nuisance?

(if its not cool then I'll delete this post but otherwise lets dive in to this mess and try not to imagine how many trees died for our sins)

Part One Act One Scene One (Kings Cross)

- Before we get to the goods, a reservation of rights clause: the play may not be performed without express permission of the rights holders. Considering how many special effects are required to pull this off, I doubt many smaller theatre companies would want to, even if there wasn't the risk of being sued. Well, JK can't stop me from giving impromptu live readings of the more execrable bits of dialogue to my dogs, and she can't stop me from writing this commentary either, so here we go!

- looks like we pick up directly from where we left off in the DH epilogue. Back to JK's sugar fun world where the goodies solved all the problems, erased all the oppression, turned the world into their personal funhouse utopia, etc etc etc --- or did they???

- Harry accompanies his handcrafted happy ending family to the train platform. The children he named after dead people, primarily his parents in order to glorify himself. Ginny doesn't get to name the children. She's just the wife.
The staging directions say "two large cages rattle on top of two laden trollies" Laden with what? The cages? Do they have bags? Are the bags on the cages? Are the cages in lieu of the bags? Whats in the cages? Owls? Did Ginny get to name the owls? Now we wait until our mistress JK sees fit to tweet their insufferably twee owl names from on high, and pretend they were an important part of the story all along. Gosh I can't wait I'm so excited.

- Sounds like James has been teasing Albus. Parent!Harry is on the scene to put a stop to it. Sounds more like Ginny does the job of reassuring the children - she sounds like she's more involved with the children than Harry. Whats the bet she wrote the letters three times a week to James and just got Harry to sign the bottom. Or else did Harry write long, meandering self-involved letters to James that were just speels about his old Hogwarts glories. I hope not. Even Sirius did better than that.

- Ginny tells us how to get onto platform 9 3/4. Thanks Ginny. Lily tells us she's excited. Thanks Lily. Thats enough exposition out of the females now. Be quiet, Albus is about to start his important boy journey of self-discovery. No girls allowed.

- The family crowd around James and Albus' trollies and disappear into magic land.

Comments

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I have sometimes thought that Lily Luna’s middle name is in honor of Remus Lupin, not Luna Lovegood, thus completing the trio of “good” Marauders—though if that were so, it should be Lupina, not Luna. It is a major slap to Hermione if Harry, in his one instance of naming a child after a living friend rather than a dead hero, chose to give the honor to Luna Lovegood, with whom he had fewer than half a dozen conversations in canon, rather than the friend who stuck by him when even Ron skipped out. “Lily Luna” has the advantage of alliteration, but personally I think “Lily Hermione” sounds less sappy.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... you've got a point there.

I always assumed that Ginny had no say at all in the names, and Harry *did* have some moments of special empathy with Luna in the last couple of books, which made me automatically think he'd awarded the name to his daughter ... but you're right about the Hermione thing.

Is it possible that Hermione was made Godmother and Luna then given the runner-up prize? Would that be reasonable for Harry's only girl?

Otherwise this is a decent argument that Ginny got to choose one name of the six, thanks!

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Here’s my new headcanon: One day Harry is strolling down Diagon Alley, considering what to name his soon-to-be-born daughter. Obviously her first name will be Lily, but he doesn’t have any other heroic dead women in his personal history. And he wants something that sounds nice; Albus Severus was sort of a disaster in that regard. What goes with Lily…?

Luna Lovegood happens to go by, wrapped up in her own world, and it hits him: Lily Luna! That sounds great. Luna isn’t dead, but he’ll just have to forget that part of it. Ginny liked Luna, didn’t she? They didn’t have anything in common, but they were in the same year, anyway. Lily Luna! Perfect!

When Lily Luna is named, Luna Lovegood is puzzled to be remembered, and Hermione is hurt to be forgotten, but neither one says anything to Harry. Neither does Ginny. They all know better.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Bravo! Your headcanon is more likely than Ginny having any say in the matter. :-)