Cursed Child Act One Scenes 2-5

[fdsfd]

The second instalment of this literary masterpiece. It took a while to write because every time I looked at the page

But before we do that, check out this scientific graph of why this play sucks
http://probablydavid.tumblr.com/post/148572276325/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-number-of

love that #data.

Act One Scene Two (Platform Nine and Three Quarters)

- the platform is busy, filled with witches and wizards trying to work out how to say goodbye to their "progeny" (quote unquote). Progeny sounds like something a scientist would say to describe a fertilised embryo, so maybe start by not calling them that.

- The family Potter encounters Ron, Hermione and Rose. They seem to have left half their progeny behind. Run, Hugo, run!!! Ron does a bad nose stealing trick on Lily, proving that Movie!Ron the idiot has been sent up from casting instead of an actual character. He'll be here a while :/

- Rose and Hermione are both certain that Ron only managed to pass his driving test by confunding the examiner. This is fine because muggles are a lesser species, so you don't have to not mess with their heads or follow their laws, while their roads, train stations, etc are at the disposal of your (superior) segregated society.

- Albus tells Harry he's worried he might be put in Slytherin. Harry, in only the first of many instances of good parenting we will encounter, meets this test of fatherhood by demonstrating to Albus that he never completely grasped the subject-object distinction so he thinks its fine to reassure his walking tombstone child that one of the two people (who are dead) Albus serves as a mobile epitaph for was in Slytherin and was a brave person and saved his bacon and so Harry has no problem with Slytherin so neither should Albus so stop worrying about it. nailed it.
Harry tells Albus that Hogwarts "will be the making of him," as it was for himself, omitting that "the making of him" was orchestrated by the other half of Albus' walking tombstone, was for the purpose of making him a disposable suicide bomber and nothing else, (a "pig to slaughter") and ultimately made him into a prick.
Ok so this play is largely about two boys (Albus and Scorpius) and their bad fathers and they go on a quest to save another boy who doesn't matter, which serves as a proxy a) for the fathers to relive their trauma through their sons and b) for the sons to accept their identity as sons. A lot of the spork is going to be taken up with pointing out how poorly conceived and executed this theme is, so if you think I'm harping on Harry the bad father, and Albus the ungrateful son, thats because everything else is just a backdrop to this. The point here is just that Harry is relating to Albus as an extension of himself rather than a unique individual. He'll do that a lot.

- Harry tells James to stop teasing Albus and that they both better get on the train. Lily tells us she's going to chase the train as it leaves (re-enacting Ginny in PS)

- Hermione tells Rose to say hello to Neville for her. Hermione comments that Rose is worried whether she'll break the Quidditch scoring record in her first or second year, and how early she'll be able to take her OWLS, and what colour dress she should wear when she gets a medal for inventing a cure for lycanthropy, and whether seventh year students will take orders from their shrimp sized head girl, etc, etc, etc. I get it she's perfect please stop. Ron comments that he has no idea where Rose's ambition came from. Neither do I but being ambitious and obnoxious is going to be 3/4 of her character, for the time when she exists at all, so we gotta deal with it.

- Ginny asks Harry how he'd feel if Albus was sorted into Slytherin. The most important thing about Albus' sorting is how Harry feels about it (just so you know). Ron comments that they always suspected that Ginny would be sorted into Slytherin. "Fred and George ran a book" no they didn't. Why must JK peddle lies in my house? For Fred and George to have taken bets on whether Ginny would or would not be a faithful maidservant of the Gryffindor OBWHF Ginny would had to have had a character before emerging as a sparkling flawless butterfly in OOTP, so I'm calling bullshit on that one. Also the extremely astute sporker of HBP noted how JK "re-fashioned" Ginny as a Cool Girl by associating her with Fred and George, a trend that continues here. Fred's dead, JK. I didn't even like the guy, but can he not RIP in peace??

- Hermione wants to leave, because everyone's looking at them. Ginny says that happens a lot with those three. She sounds jealous. Well, it might have happened with you, Ginny, but you never had an actual character or character arc, so honestly I think you should be grateful you were allowed to gestate the next protagonist and the other two walking tombstones, and that we let you talk occasionally. Thin ice, Ginny. Thin ice.

(they leave)

Act One Scene Three (The Hogwarts Express)

- Albus and Rose are on the train. So is the Trolley Witch (we'll meet her again later). While Albus wants a chocolate frog, Rose is already plotting her future popularity. Their future popularity. "I'm a Granger-Weasley and you're a Potter - everyone will want to be friends with us, we've got the pick of anyone we want." What a snotty little brat. What is she, the child of some aristocrat? I bet Draco thought the exact same thing when he was riding the train for the first time. Rose is going to find a whole bunch of silent lackeys (like Crabbe and Goyle) to carry her around on a palanquin and peel grapes for her. Who put these ideas into her head? Hermione? Was it you?
Honestly, there was a girl in my year like this at school, her mother was a famous barrister or something and she thought it entitled her to be the Queen of the friendgroup and get people to shun each other based on some imagined slight and it took a concerted ignoring effort from everyone to disabuse her. But this isn't Rose's story, so we don't get to watch her chill out (I'll be surprised if we find out the names of her friends tbh) so she needs to tip herself in the garbage can ASAP so Albus can get on with being the protagonist.

- The co-protagonist is hiding in one of the compartments. He's the best character in this garbage pile, but seeing as everyone else is so terrible that's not really saying very much. He doesn't meet Rose's lackey standards though. He offers them some sweets, and Rose gives us the backstory that everyone already knows (his dad was a death eater, their parents didn't get on, his mum for all intents and purposes doesn't exist [sorry Astoria]), and then makes it so much worse.

- The rumour about Astoria and Scorpius is just so stupid I'm not going to dignify it by typing it out. Its not even a good piece of misdirection for Delphini or a good forewarning of time travel. Its just dumb. Astoria joins Ginny as a walking womb :/

- Rose tells Scorpius it's probably rubbish "I mean.... look, you've got a nose." If only JK had made her antagonist actually threatening, then we wouldn't have had to sit through that ghost of a joke.

- Scorpius: "Father-son issues, I have those." Yes and this play is going to consist of little else, so its best you start mentioning them early and often.

- Rose turns up her nose and leaves, leaving the two co-protagonists together to deal with their important boy issues together. No girls allowed.

Act One Scene Four

- Ok so in lieu of a series of events that develop characterisation and provide some conflict (a "narrative" and "drama" respectively) Scene Four is just a slew of random scenes thrown together. The characters are largely static over the course of the play (if they develop its not obvious to me) but here we see them get sorted and do broom flying lessons. The only notable bits here is that Rose says "thank Dumbledore" when she gets sorted into Gryffindor (ugh) and Albus and Scorpius go into Slytherin, although all traits that make Slytherin Slytherin have been stripped from the house so instead of it being a conflict about blood, or society, or history or anything its just about the colour of their ties. Anyway Rose has been shunted off to Gryffindor, and Albus is in Slytherin with Scorpius, so no girls allowed in Slytherin I guess.
After Albus gets sorted Rose comments that "this is not how its supposed to be" which bugs me for reasons I can't quite elucidate - like Rose is aware of the fact that there's a script for the Potter Granger kids to be following, and the kids of Ron, Harry and Hermione are just pawns to re-enact their parents' glory and Albus hasn't quite got the memo, but then Albus and Scorpius will literally re-enact their parents glory anyway, and Rose isn't a part of that, so its not like any of this matters. Like I get that they're characters reading from a script, but Rose pointing out that there is a script, and then going on to be ignored as Albus and Scorpius re-enact it anyway, it just feels really hollow. Almost fake? I don't know. Like I really like stories where characters are aware of their authors intentions and fight against it (as opposed to just hearing a prophecy, which is being used as an easy way to plot by the author, and doing everything it says) but here even if Rose is aware there's a plan, she's not a part of it anyway so who cares.

- Anyway once Albus is done failing at broom holding he meets his father back at the station after Christmas. Albus doesn't want Harry to stand too close to him, while Harry does autographs and tells Albus not to worry, that people are staring at Harry and not him. Anyway, Albus begins the thing where he's a disappointing ungrateful son, and Harry does the thing where he only conceives of his son through the prism of his own egoism, and it's just as awful as I'm describing it here. James tells the Slithering Slytherin to stop dithering and get on the train, which is a nice bit of assonance. Maybe elucidation skips a generation, because he didn't get it from Harry or Ginny. Scorpius tells Harry that he doesn't need Harry's version of friends (aka a new iteration of Ron and Hermione), he's already got a friend, so that's that.

- Draco emerges from the crowd. He wants help from the ministry about the rumour thats too stupid to be typed. Apparently Astoria isn't well and the rumour isn't helping. Actually, Astoria isn't well because she's got invisible-itis, as well as having her name permanently mis-spelled, so the rumour thing is probably pretty low on her list.

- Albus and Rose only need to keep up the pretence of being friends until the train leaves. I'm not really sure what the beef is, here, only that Gryffindor and Slytherin are still enemies, because problems never get solved, or because Rose is determined to perpetuate house rivalry, or because Albus isn't lackey material, or what. Its a good thing that Rose is only a girl, so I don't have to waste the energy explaining why her problems don't matter. Oh she's now the best chaser ever in the entire world so don't pretend girls don't matter.

- Albus and Scorpius keep sucking at potions. I wonder who the potions master is?? Anyway both boys get bullied pretty heavily here, but by total non-entities, about totally ridiculous things, so its very hard to take it seriously.

- Anyway we flash-forward to third year Hogsmeade forms. Albus doesn't want to go because he hates the student body for bullying him. Harry tells him he's been owling the headmisstress - Albus is surly, uncooperative [not "being bullied" I note - is McGonagall blind or just going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in her office?] Albus says a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to change himself into a perfect son via magic and then runs off.

- he runs off to find Scorpius, whose extremely upset because Astoria died to give him bad feelings about it. Maybe the invisible-itis was too much for her.

- This year Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, and the scene ends with Albus saying that he didn't choose to be Harry's son. Well, unfortunately, the hack of a playwright chose to write a play about this issue, instead of other, actually interesting things, so we're both stuck, aren't we?

Act One Scene Five

(The Ministry of Magic)

- Ok so here we are with actual adult characters. Unfortunately the actual adult characters are going to behave like how a precocious child thinks adults should behave (or like adults who never properly grew up, which is more likely). It reminds me of https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3682339/1/The-Golden-Age, where Harry and Hermione basically just assimilate themselves/ are assimilated into the power structure of the Ministry and just start conforming as hard as possible. Like what if this play was a fanfic that was good??? It would look more like that honestly.

- Anyway Harry brings Hermione the plot device. Theodore Nott's being arrested, on charges of what I don't know, maybe Hermione made "being evil" a crime. He's bleeding from a cut on his cheek because he's the man who takes charge, but all the duels he'll be in on stage he'll lose really badly so he's competent, but only when there's no one around to check.

- This plot device is even better than the one in PoA. "Apparently wizardry has moved on since we were kids" well mentally you're both probably still eleven, so, young in mind, young in body I guess.

- Hermione chides him on his paperwork. Apparently his papers disclose that evil is afoot. Hermione can tell its evil, because she's using her nineteenth century imperialism!glasses, through them she can see that its the British ministry's responsibility that mountain trolls are riding graphorns through Hungary (question 1. could Harry or Hermione find Hungary on a map? 2. could they have a conversation with a Hungarian where they treat the Hungarian as an equal or a psuedo-English almost person like Krum? 3. Are there that many mountains in Hungary for the trolls to have a rodeo in? I thought it was mostly a plain? Has anyone been there to check?), mountain trolls with winged tattoos are walking through the Greek Seas (its August and they're on vacation and they got tattoos because they're rad af leave them alone) and the werewolves have gone underground (so pumped Remus died so werewolves could continue to exist on the margins of society). Anyway, the trolls, graphorns, giants, werewolves, etc are evil. Hermione says they're "allies of darkness, people and beasts that fought alongside Voldemort" and because she's an incredibly clever adult she hasn't realised that they had genuine grievances about a society that oppressed them that only he promised to address and after he lost I guess the ministry (and Hermione and Harry) just pretended that actually they were just evil and savage this whole time.

- Now that she's the person giving the orders, Hermione's rebelling against her parents (the brain-meddled, Australian ones) by eating toffee. That's probably something for a psychoanalyst, honestly.

- Hermione and Harry commiserate about being absentee parents. Imagine how much damage these two could do if they were more involved. Also her secretary is called Ethel (what a cute name it sounds like something out of the worst witch) and because she never appears and has to deal with Hermione as a boss I've decided that she is the best character and Delphi's girlfriend and her and Delphi run off to France together with Teddy as a ménage à trois.

- Harry leaves via the guest entrance of the Ministry (the phone box), the staging directions telling us that he "has the weight of the world on his shoulders." But seeing as he already fixed all the problems in society, along with Hermione, that weight probably isn't all that heavy. Maybe its magic.

Ok I'll leave it there. Next time we'll get more into the "plot" (such as it is) and also the Trolly Witch will re-appear, and my personal favourite character (Delphini) will emerge from the sludge of this mistake, rich and compelling female characters both, so look forward to it :)

Comments

[mitchell bender (from livejournal.com)]

I'm sorry, but I do not see "rich and compelling female characters" in either the Trolley Witch or Delphi. I am genuinely curious to see your argument for that, because I thought they were both pretty insulting.

The Trolley Witch was a one-off scene, and honestly didn't read as human to me. She's apparently been doing the same job without complaint for 190 years, she talks like an Eldritch Abomination, and her entire motivation is doing that job so as not to let down the superior who installed her in it (who is no longer around). She's the longest-lived character in the Harry Potter canon, and she's literally a servant who is bound to the train and whose entire identity is bound up in that service (I was wondering if she was brainwashed somehow). You'd better believe they'd never portray a male character that way, unless he was also a house-elf or some other supposedly subservient species.

The more I think about the Trolley Witch, the more horrific I think this depiction actually is, because if anything she started off as human and something was done to her to bind her to the job and give her the weird/freaky abilities she uses in the text, as well as confer her abnormal longevity (is she immortal?). And I think the writers did that without a second thought, for shock value and/or humour. Not to mention that her role in the play is to be the EEEVIL WOMAN trying to keep the boys in their place, she's an obstacle for them to overcome and nothing more.

And then there's Delphi, who (I strongly suspect) was shoehorned into existence because they needed someone who wanted Voldy to return and couldn't think of any existing character who might. Any agency she might have had was ruined by the fact she's eventually revealed to be following a prophecy (how much better a villain would she have been if she'd spent ages poring over history books, trying to figure out what changes would work?), and her characterisation is all over the place (Manic Pixie Dream Girl/Tonks clone until the reveal she's evil, then she's basically just a cackling panto villain doing it For Teh Evulz and then in the end it's revealed to be daddy issues all along? I didn't buy it.), and with the inexplicable wacky hair colour and improbably strong magical abilities, she trips pretty much every Canon Immigrant Mary Sue radar imaginable. (Plus the logistics of her existence are very, very difficult to justify.) Genetics make you evil, heritage is destiny!

There may be some potential in Delphi for fanfic authors to explore (I've actually already encountered a thing or two) but I do not think what's actually on page/on stage justifies "rich and compelling" without a great deal of external assistance.

[fdsfd (from livejournal.com)]

My guy I agree with everything you said it was sarcasm they're JK's worst characters to date.

Good point on the Trolley Witch seeming literally inhuman. Does she even get a name? Maybe she's not actually a person but a golem or something so its less awful.

Re: Delphi. I said Scorpius was the best character, but because of her nefarious plans, evil cackling, OTT melodrama, etc, I think she's going to turn out to be my favourite. I love a woman in control, honestly. Also she's the only character who is actually driving the plot of this car crash so there is that. Shame its just for a man instead of on her own behalf though :(

[mitchell bender (from livejournal.com)]

Okay, this is a bit embarrassing, because my sarcasm detector is usually a lot better than that :P But I have actually seen people praising Delphi as a character (along with a lot of the other bullshit I hated in this play), so...

The Trolley Witch never gets a name, no. Everyone who refers to her throughout the entire play only ever calls her that. I prefer to think of her as a magical construct because the alternatives are all pretty horrific. If she's human, she's literally the longest-lived human in the Potterverse except bloody Nicolas Flamel.

I do actually think there could have been ways to salvage Delphi somewhat, which I discuss in my own sporking of this. If she didn't end up being motivated by a prophecy that said "the plot of this play is going to happen", but had actually spent ages studying history books trying to figure out what she could change... well, it'd be a start, at least.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I do actually think there could have been ways to salvage Delphi somewhat, which I discuss in my own sporking of this./

Oh, do you mind providing a link to the sporking? :)

[mitchell bender (from livejournal.com)]

I actually tried to link it in the earlier post but my comment got flagged as spam. It's over at my blog "Point Stick, Vent Spleen", which you can find easily via google (it's actually a joint blog with my partner Loten, but she refused to read the play so I did this one mostly on my own).

That said, when it comes to how to fix Delphi I didn't end up having much more to say than "it'd be better to get rid of the prophecy and have her figure out the plan via careful study of history". That would do a lot by itself, in terms of general competence and motivation, but it still situates her in this ludicrous time travel plot. There's not really anything I could come up with to make her origins make sense.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the late response, but thank you! I enjoyed reading your sporking. :)

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

The Trolley Witch was actually the first thing I liked, reading this play. When Al Sev was preparing to climb out the train window, and the response of the Trolley Witch was, “Something from the trolley, dears?” I thought: What’s going on? Is she a robot or something? Then when she appeared on the roof of the train, complete with her trolley and exactly the same line, I laughed out loud. Yes, she is a robot—a claw-sprouting, candy-pushing, robot granny. The joke worked for me because I’d been primed by my response to her previous appearance, but humor is a tricky thing. If it doesn’t hit the bull’s eye for you, it just doesn’t.

If you wish to succeed as a jester, you’ll need
To consider each person’s auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalize C
(For C is so very particular);
And D may be dull, and E’s very thick skull
Is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
That he’s known your best joke from his cradle!

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

"she's literally a servant who is bound to the train and whose entire identity is bound up in that service"

also, this is a train that does about 6 journeys a year. How does she fill the other 359 days?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Ah, poor trolley lady. I remember back in the day someone shipped her with Dumbles, bonding around a love of sweets.