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deathtocapslockThis installment is short because I wanted to finish the end of Part One (and ~reflect) before moving on to Part Two.
Act Two Scene 17
(Staircases)
Ok so in this scene alt!Ron meets alt!Hermione and they have what was probably intended to be a wistful romantic moment but mostly just comes off as Ron being a bad father and contemplating adultery. He calls her "Professor Granger" but she calls him Ron instead of Mr. Weasley or Mr. Patil or whatever so I'm not sure what degree of familiarity is implied here.
Ron's been to see Panju to instruct him in the finer points of mustache grooming (potions accident) and mentions Albus' daydream to Hermione that they were married and have a daughter. They both agree that it would be strange and that they are just friends and nothing else etc and meanwhile, in my imagination, Padma and her harem composed entirely out of people that appreciate her decide they've had enough of the spa and head into the sauna.
Act Two Scene 18
(Headmistress' Office)
Professor McGonagall is still on spying duty, in lieu of actual responsibilities a headmistress incurss in running a school.
Ginny and Harry turn up in the fireplace and for some reason Harry's in a conciliatory mood. When McGonagall says she's had enough of stalking he gives this apology:
Harry: Minerva, I come here in peace, not war. I should never have spoken to you that way.
(This isn't actually an apology for what he actually did, by the way, which was threatening and intimidating a headmistress into spying on and segregating her students, and acting like a Junior Umbridge, its just an apology that he was rude while he was doing it. Maybe if he'd issued a Ministry Decree or whatever it would have been fine for him to power trip.)
Anyway then Draco turns up and they're both off to apologise to their kids. At this juncture I'm just going to point out how weird it is to have this school crawling with adults when in the course of the books it was the kids' domain all the time, but the protagonist is an adult who never out-grew his childhood so of course he has to come back and infest this place with his problems.
Act Two Scene 19
(Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom)
Albus and Scorpius are preparing their plan to turn Cedric into a loser. They're going to engorgio his bubble-head charm in the lake during the second task so he floats away like an idiot. Albus practices the charm by inflating a bar of soap and Scorpius voices his approval like this:
Scorpius: Nice. Consider me engorgimpressed.
The dialogue in this play is so bad this is just a sample of what I am sparing you. Scorpius is probably the least bad character, if only because he's painted as so sympathetic and unlike Albus and Harry he doesn't go around demanding sympathy and making his problems other people's problems, but his dialogue is still this kind of bland, quip-spouting everyman zingers like this so its very hard to take him seriously as an actual character.
Then Moaning Myrtle arises out of the sink. JK's decided to double down on the trivia tidbits she spouts on twitter, because she gives her full name as Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, the name of an american politican that I guess someone like JK would appreciate enough to name a horny dead schoolgirl ghost after??? If thats flattering accept it?
Myrtle gives us some blatant revisionism about who her favourite was while proving that she still hasn't got some since the epilogue
Moaning Myrtle (she giggles): It’s been a while. Boys. In my bathroom. In my girls’ bathroom. Well, that’s not right . . . But then again, I always did have a soft spot for the Potters. And I was moderately partial to a Malfoy too. Now how can I help you pair?
lies she loved Draco's wasting disease and crying in HBP. All girls go in for that, trust me. She also loved Cedric.
Moaning Myrtle: Such a shame the pretty one had to die. Not that your father is not pretty — but Cedric Diggory — you’d be amazed at how many girls I had to hear doing love incantations in this very bathroom . . . And the weeping after he was taken.
Anyway they tell Myrtle the plan and show her the time turner and she is like what luck this sink empties directly into the lake. Also somehow Albus has purloined some Gillyweed, although from where/whom is not explained, and why Albus has to re-enact Harry's lake solution, as opposed to using the bubble head charm is also not dwelt on.
Then Albus and Scorpius go back in time, and Harry, Draco and Prof. McGonagall are too late to stop them!
Good thing Myrtle's on hand to spill the beans while perving at Harry and Draco. Harry realises that Albus has been running off because of what he overheard from Amos and the scene ends on what might be a cliffhanger if we didn't know all of that already.
Act Two Scene 20
(Triwizard Tournament Lake 1995)
We're back to the second task, with Ludo commentating. There's another joke about the french. Anyway Albus and Scorpius cast the charm on Cedric who floats up out of the water like a balloon past a whole bunch of fireworks that exclaim that Ron loves Hermione and then the timeturner pulls Scorpius back to the present, except this time its the Alt2!present, the second alternative present, which makes me even less invested than I already wasn't in the first alternative present.
Although in this present Albus the perenial fuck-up has vanished so things are looking better already. Scorpius is upset that Albus has vanished but Albus was being a bad influence and a huge self-pitying bore so hopefully he'll adjust.
Scorpius is pulled out of the lake by Delores Umbridge, the headmistress of Hogwarts. The stage directions tell us that there are dementors everywhere and a generic spirit of evil grips the theatre and "Harry's dream has come to life" although if Harry Potter has died then surely he wasn't there to have the dream in the first place? Anyway Umbridge is here to set out the terms of this new dystopia.
Umbridge: Have you swallowed something funny in there? Become a Mudblood without any of us noticing? Harry Potter died over twenty years ago as part of that failed coup on the school — he was one of those Dumbledore terrorists we bravely overthrew at the Battle of Hogwarts. Now come along — I don’t know what game you’re playing but you’re upsetting the dementors and entirely ruining Voldemort Day.
Voldemort Day.
Voldemort Day.
(gotta get down on Voldemort day)
Ok that's the end of Part One. As you can see, its not really a "story." Its more like the ghost of a story, where there actually is a story that we already saw going on in the background (Goblet of Fire) while in the foreground two new characters just watch & interfere with what happened before, without any sense that something ~new could happen or that there could be ~progess in the wizarding world/ Hogwarts/ the characters relationships with each other. The play is basically just the wizarding world having been frozen in amber for ~20 years so things that were problems before are problems now, prejudices that existed before are prejudices now, and no-one appears to have learnt any better at all. Thats one of the main reasons (imho) that people are disappointed.
As to the characters, my thoughts:
- the whole theme of the play is about fathers and sons (not mothers, not daughters), and the father re-acting to the image of the son, and vice-versa. (that's why Amos shows up, because he is fixated on the image of his dead son). I say "image" and not "father son relationship" because the main father-son couple, Albus and Harry, are crippled in that Harry can't over-come his own egoism and see Albus as an individual person and not as a reflection of himself, (similar problems with James and Lily, in that they are little workable models of his own parents). Similarly, Albus is only re-acting to his father as the ~image of a heroic champion war veteran, instead of attempting to forge his own identity not dependent on his father's history (by correcting an ostensible failure that we all know wasn't actually Harry's fault). This isn't really a ~relationship between two characters, its just them fixating on the preferred image of the other as a means of telling them something about themselves, which is why Harry gives Albus a mouldy blanket (because he has an image of himself as a lonely benighted orphan), and why Albus steals the time-turner (because he has an image of himself as the son of a war champion).
Anyway I kind of wish that the narrative had picked a moment in which Harry was actually at fault and had Albus try to remediate that, because as much as he's blameless in Cedric's death, he did actually make mistakes that hurt other people, like Sirius in OoTP, or Dumbledore in HBP, or, I dunno, double-crossing Griphook in DH, or basically his entire relationship with Snape. It just cements Harry's image as this blameworthy idol that saved everyone instead of interrogating it, which creates a strange dissonance when all he's done in Cursed Child Part One is be a self-centered prick who yells at women and calls them barren (sorry Minerva :()
- The Draco-Scorpius relationship is hamstrung by the fact that there's an invisible dead woman in between them, which just makes me too annoyed to put any more thought into what the play writer thought he was doing there.
- The friendship between Albus and Scorpius is hamstrung by a) the fact that Albus isn't really very likeable and Scorpius is too much of a woobie for me to like and b) the writers' queerbaiting for me to care about it, which is a shame because of how cool a Malfoy-Potter friendship could have been (we could have had it all starts playing somewhere in the distance)
- Instrumentalising women is v. popular in this play (Astoria, Rose, Delphi, Padma, Hermione [becoming alt!Hermione]) but for some strange reason Ginny is an actual character, which is strange because she never had one of those before. Anyway the point is that the gender politics are more obviously retrograde here, in that only men/males get to have fully formed dilemmas and conflicts that drive the plot, which will become obvious when Delphi gets revealled as doing basically the same thing as Albus, for basically the same reason, and being in the same mould as Harry (unwanted war-orphan) but when she does it a) she's monstrous (as in a literal bird monster) and b) her grief over losing her parents is obscene.
Act Two Scene 17
(Staircases)
Ok so in this scene alt!Ron meets alt!Hermione and they have what was probably intended to be a wistful romantic moment but mostly just comes off as Ron being a bad father and contemplating adultery. He calls her "Professor Granger" but she calls him Ron instead of Mr. Weasley or Mr. Patil or whatever so I'm not sure what degree of familiarity is implied here.
Ron's been to see Panju to instruct him in the finer points of mustache grooming (potions accident) and mentions Albus' daydream to Hermione that they were married and have a daughter. They both agree that it would be strange and that they are just friends and nothing else etc and meanwhile, in my imagination, Padma and her harem composed entirely out of people that appreciate her decide they've had enough of the spa and head into the sauna.
Act Two Scene 18
(Headmistress' Office)
Professor McGonagall is still on spying duty, in lieu of actual responsibilities a headmistress incurss in running a school.
Ginny and Harry turn up in the fireplace and for some reason Harry's in a conciliatory mood. When McGonagall says she's had enough of stalking he gives this apology:
Harry: Minerva, I come here in peace, not war. I should never have spoken to you that way.
(This isn't actually an apology for what he actually did, by the way, which was threatening and intimidating a headmistress into spying on and segregating her students, and acting like a Junior Umbridge, its just an apology that he was rude while he was doing it. Maybe if he'd issued a Ministry Decree or whatever it would have been fine for him to power trip.)
Anyway then Draco turns up and they're both off to apologise to their kids. At this juncture I'm just going to point out how weird it is to have this school crawling with adults when in the course of the books it was the kids' domain all the time, but the protagonist is an adult who never out-grew his childhood so of course he has to come back and infest this place with his problems.
Act Two Scene 19
(Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom)
Albus and Scorpius are preparing their plan to turn Cedric into a loser. They're going to engorgio his bubble-head charm in the lake during the second task so he floats away like an idiot. Albus practices the charm by inflating a bar of soap and Scorpius voices his approval like this:
Scorpius: Nice. Consider me engorgimpressed.
The dialogue in this play is so bad this is just a sample of what I am sparing you. Scorpius is probably the least bad character, if only because he's painted as so sympathetic and unlike Albus and Harry he doesn't go around demanding sympathy and making his problems other people's problems, but his dialogue is still this kind of bland, quip-spouting everyman zingers like this so its very hard to take him seriously as an actual character.
Then Moaning Myrtle arises out of the sink. JK's decided to double down on the trivia tidbits she spouts on twitter, because she gives her full name as Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, the name of an american politican that I guess someone like JK would appreciate enough to name a horny dead schoolgirl ghost after??? If thats flattering accept it?
Myrtle gives us some blatant revisionism about who her favourite was while proving that she still hasn't got some since the epilogue
Moaning Myrtle (she giggles): It’s been a while. Boys. In my bathroom. In my girls’ bathroom. Well, that’s not right . . . But then again, I always did have a soft spot for the Potters. And I was moderately partial to a Malfoy too. Now how can I help you pair?
lies she loved Draco's wasting disease and crying in HBP. All girls go in for that, trust me. She also loved Cedric.
Moaning Myrtle: Such a shame the pretty one had to die. Not that your father is not pretty — but Cedric Diggory — you’d be amazed at how many girls I had to hear doing love incantations in this very bathroom . . . And the weeping after he was taken.
Anyway they tell Myrtle the plan and show her the time turner and she is like what luck this sink empties directly into the lake. Also somehow Albus has purloined some Gillyweed, although from where/whom is not explained, and why Albus has to re-enact Harry's lake solution, as opposed to using the bubble head charm is also not dwelt on.
Then Albus and Scorpius go back in time, and Harry, Draco and Prof. McGonagall are too late to stop them!
Good thing Myrtle's on hand to spill the beans while perving at Harry and Draco. Harry realises that Albus has been running off because of what he overheard from Amos and the scene ends on what might be a cliffhanger if we didn't know all of that already.
Act Two Scene 20
(Triwizard Tournament Lake 1995)
We're back to the second task, with Ludo commentating. There's another joke about the french. Anyway Albus and Scorpius cast the charm on Cedric who floats up out of the water like a balloon past a whole bunch of fireworks that exclaim that Ron loves Hermione and then the timeturner pulls Scorpius back to the present, except this time its the Alt2!present, the second alternative present, which makes me even less invested than I already wasn't in the first alternative present.
Although in this present Albus the perenial fuck-up has vanished so things are looking better already. Scorpius is upset that Albus has vanished but Albus was being a bad influence and a huge self-pitying bore so hopefully he'll adjust.
Scorpius is pulled out of the lake by Delores Umbridge, the headmistress of Hogwarts. The stage directions tell us that there are dementors everywhere and a generic spirit of evil grips the theatre and "Harry's dream has come to life" although if Harry Potter has died then surely he wasn't there to have the dream in the first place? Anyway Umbridge is here to set out the terms of this new dystopia.
Umbridge: Have you swallowed something funny in there? Become a Mudblood without any of us noticing? Harry Potter died over twenty years ago as part of that failed coup on the school — he was one of those Dumbledore terrorists we bravely overthrew at the Battle of Hogwarts. Now come along — I don’t know what game you’re playing but you’re upsetting the dementors and entirely ruining Voldemort Day.
Voldemort Day.
Voldemort Day.
(gotta get down on Voldemort day)
Ok that's the end of Part One. As you can see, its not really a "story." Its more like the ghost of a story, where there actually is a story that we already saw going on in the background (Goblet of Fire) while in the foreground two new characters just watch & interfere with what happened before, without any sense that something ~new could happen or that there could be ~progess in the wizarding world/ Hogwarts/ the characters relationships with each other. The play is basically just the wizarding world having been frozen in amber for ~20 years so things that were problems before are problems now, prejudices that existed before are prejudices now, and no-one appears to have learnt any better at all. Thats one of the main reasons (imho) that people are disappointed.
As to the characters, my thoughts:
- the whole theme of the play is about fathers and sons (not mothers, not daughters), and the father re-acting to the image of the son, and vice-versa. (that's why Amos shows up, because he is fixated on the image of his dead son). I say "image" and not "father son relationship" because the main father-son couple, Albus and Harry, are crippled in that Harry can't over-come his own egoism and see Albus as an individual person and not as a reflection of himself, (similar problems with James and Lily, in that they are little workable models of his own parents). Similarly, Albus is only re-acting to his father as the ~image of a heroic champion war veteran, instead of attempting to forge his own identity not dependent on his father's history (by correcting an ostensible failure that we all know wasn't actually Harry's fault). This isn't really a ~relationship between two characters, its just them fixating on the preferred image of the other as a means of telling them something about themselves, which is why Harry gives Albus a mouldy blanket (because he has an image of himself as a lonely benighted orphan), and why Albus steals the time-turner (because he has an image of himself as the son of a war champion).
Anyway I kind of wish that the narrative had picked a moment in which Harry was actually at fault and had Albus try to remediate that, because as much as he's blameless in Cedric's death, he did actually make mistakes that hurt other people, like Sirius in OoTP, or Dumbledore in HBP, or, I dunno, double-crossing Griphook in DH, or basically his entire relationship with Snape. It just cements Harry's image as this blameworthy idol that saved everyone instead of interrogating it, which creates a strange dissonance when all he's done in Cursed Child Part One is be a self-centered prick who yells at women and calls them barren (sorry Minerva :()
- The Draco-Scorpius relationship is hamstrung by the fact that there's an invisible dead woman in between them, which just makes me too annoyed to put any more thought into what the play writer thought he was doing there.
- The friendship between Albus and Scorpius is hamstrung by a) the fact that Albus isn't really very likeable and Scorpius is too much of a woobie for me to like and b) the writers' queerbaiting for me to care about it, which is a shame because of how cool a Malfoy-Potter friendship could have been (we could have had it all starts playing somewhere in the distance)
- Instrumentalising women is v. popular in this play (Astoria, Rose, Delphi, Padma, Hermione [becoming alt!Hermione]) but for some strange reason Ginny is an actual character, which is strange because she never had one of those before. Anyway the point is that the gender politics are more obviously retrograde here, in that only men/males get to have fully formed dilemmas and conflicts that drive the plot, which will become obvious when Delphi gets revealled as doing basically the same thing as Albus, for basically the same reason, and being in the same mould as Harry (unwanted war-orphan) but when she does it a) she's monstrous (as in a literal bird monster) and b) her grief over losing her parents is obscene.
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