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

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

In OotP, she tells Harry to sit in Luna's carriage, because 'only Loony Lovegood's in there'. When Luna is Quidditch commentator, she says that Ginny is 'nice' and stops other people calling Luna 'Looney', on the premise, I suppose, that it's only ok to do so behind her back.

Ginny tolerates Luna, and Luna likes Ginny, but best friends?

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

Well, they are side-characters we don't get to see on the page much, but after her introduction, it is suggested that Ginny and Luna are friends and spend time together. Enough that the HP wiki says the same thing:

"Luna and Ginny Weasley were in the same year at Hogwarts, though in different houses; Ginny was in Gryffindor whereas Luna was in Ravenclaw. Ginny seemed to find Luna rather peculiar, as she first referred to Luna as "Loony Lovegood" (though in an affectionate way). The two were very friendly, as Ginny led Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom into her train compartment in 1995, conversing politely with her.[4]

Luna became one of Ginny's best friends through Dumbledore's Army, and Ginny began telling others not to call Luna "Loony," prompting Luna to randomly state during her Quidditch commentary that Ginny was nice and she liked her.[5] Along with Neville, Luna and Ginny led the re-formed Dumbledore's Army while Hogwarts was under Voldemort's control.[6] Ginny was also one of the five portraits — along with Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville — that Luna painted and hung from her bedroom ceiling, with the word "friends" joining them together in gold writing."

We don't get to see much of Ginny at all in the book, but it's implied that Neville, Ginny, and Luna are best friends by the end of the series, and she doesn't have her daughter until a decade later. Especially since, other than the boys Ginny dated, she had no other friends that we're told about. They were all Harry's friends.

This is the first time I've ever heard someone say they weren't best friends . . . I didn't even know that was a fan theory.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

I agree that by the end of their schooling Ginny & Luna might be friends, but I find it very difficult to think of them as such earlier in the books.

[dorea-ysleen.livejournal.com]

I agree. Too bad that (except for her boyfriends, of course) we never hear about Ginny's actual friends at school - we can't even tell wether or not they're female...

The reference I remember clearest is at the beginning of HBP. They're on the Hogwarts Express, Ron and Hermione are on prefect duty and Ginny leaves Harry as well, so he remembers that she has her own friends and doesn't hang out with them at school. Considering that at least some of these friends must be Gryffindors in Ginny's year it's quite telling that Harry can't even name one...

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

The trouble with HP wiki is that the subjective view of the writer/s creeps in. There is nothing in the text to suggest that Ginny uses the name 'Looney' affectionately - she takes Harry into Luna's carriage because she thinks that Luna will be 'alright' as opposed to people staring at Harry because of the death of Cedric, not because she is Luna's great friend. She does 'converse politely' with her, but that suggests acquaintance rather than friendship. They work together in the DA, but I don't think there's anything to say they became best friends. Luna saying Ginny was nice and that she liked her suggests someone she's admiring rather than a bosom friend. Yes, by the end of the book, Luna, Ginny and Neville have formed a second trio, but that seems to be the result of circumstances rather than they stuck together because they were already friends (in fact, Ginny seems closer to Neville). They both strike me as girls who didn't form close friendships with other girls, and therefore they may well have been the closest the other had to a female friend - I just don't get the 'best friends' vibe from them.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Additionally, Luna later describes 5th year's DA (4th year for her) as "almost like having friends", which pretty much implies that she doesn't have any 'actual' friends - including Ginny.

Note also that we never actually see Luna over at the Weasley house while Harry is staying over during the summers, nor hear of Ginny running over to Luna's to see her friend.

Lastly, we have a 'lonely' first year Ginny who connects with her diary, not her 'friend' Luna - and it isn't as if Luna sorted into Slytherin. No one should have had a problem with Ginny being friends with a Ravenclaw. I suppose Luna is partially supposed to be a tie to another 'oddball' - we even have disparaging names - Looney and Snivelus.