Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Last week, I saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway in New York. This play was a two-day endeavor; it was split into Part 1 and Part 2, each of which was the length of a standard Broadway production. (That is, each was about 2.5 hours, including an intermission.) Somewhat ashamedly, I am not as familiar with the Harry Potter series as I would like, so my interest in seeing the show was not rooted in series fandom. Rather, the appeal to me was that Imogen Heap composed and arranged the music. I suppose because I knew this information, I had mistakenly thought the show was a musical; however, it is a play. My review of the production follows.

Rather than being a musical, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play with set changes, transitions, and occasional scenes that are supported by Imogen Heap compositions. There is occasional choreography, whose sole purpose I can only guess is to allow more time for stage hands to set the next scene. The stage work, special effects, and lightning are top-notch. I do not think the story needed to be 4.5 hours long (excluding intermissions); I think the script could have been edited, perhaps by advancing some scenes faster or by cutting a few scenes entirely. Part of the reason I think this is that the plot was more simplistic and far less original than I was expecting it to be. (Spoiler alert: The main plot involves time travel into the past, which messes up the future and must be set right. Like...it's been done before.) I don't feel particularly bad about revealing that "spoiler", even though there is an unspoken pact of maintaining the story's secrecy. ("#KeepTheSecrets" was a hashtag created when the play debuted.) Perhaps it's because of my unfamiliarity with the original Harry Potter story, but the "secrets" that are revealed in the play don't seem to be that revolutionary. As far as I could tell, this play seemed entirely self-contained; that is, none of the plot twists, or "secrets", altered the events or the interpretation of the original series. All the plot twists occur in the alternate timelines generated as a result of the time-travel. So I'm not sure why maintaining secrecy has a heightened profile.

Now...the music. It turns out that the majority of the music is actually material that Imogen Heap had previously released on her albums and was resampled/rearranged for this show. While in the theater, I was able to identify bits from at least 24 distinct songs of hers. Below is the list of tracks on the Cursed Child soundtrack; the Imogen Heap songs that I was able to identify sampled within these tracks are in brackets.

Suite One:
1. Platform 9 3/4 [First Train Home]
2. The Hogwarts Express [The Listening Chair]
3. Welcome to Hogwarts [Lifeline]
4. Wand Dance [Cycle Song]
5. Albus Severus Potter [Wait It Out]
6. The Blanket [The Moment I Said It]
7. Hut on the Rock
8. A Malfoy [Me the Machine]
9. Anything From the Trolley, Dears? [Aha!]
10. Ministry of Magic [The Walk]
11. St. Oswald's
12. Wizarding World [Headlock]
13. Shadows and Spirits [Have You Got it in You?]

Suite Two:
14. Privet Drive [The Beast]
15. McGonagall's Office [Run-Time]
16. The Forbidden Forest
17. Edge of the Forest [Hide and Seek]
18. Dragons! [Tiny Human]
19. Dumbledore [Have You Got it in You?]
20. Staircase Ballet [Half Life]
21. The Duel
22. Invisibility Cloak
23. Moaning Myrtle [Little Bird]
24. Scorpius Alone [You Know Where to Find Me]

Suite Three:
25. A World of Darkness [You Know Where to Find Me]
26. Another Hogwarts [Minds Without Fear]
27. Dementors [2-1]
28. Expecto Patronum
29. In Trouble (Again)
30. Slytherin Dormitory [Climb to Sakteng]
31. The Owlery [You Know Where to Find Me/The Beast]
32. A New Prophecy [Canvas]
33. The Augurey

Suite Four:
34. Extraordinary General Meeting [The Walk]
35. Godric's Hollow [Entanglement]
36. Paint and Memory
37. Something Written [The Moment I Said It]
38. The Final Battle [Closing In/The Beast]
39. The Arrival
40. Lily and James [Climb to Sakteng]
41. Burning Bed
42. A Nice Day [Goodnight and Go]

It is important to note that some portions of the soundtrack do indeed appear to be new material. However, I am not completely familiar with all of Heap's canon, and so if I have missed any songs of hers, I will gladly update this list. (I really want to know exactly how much of the Cursed Child soundtrack was actually new).

Of the material that appears new or new-ish, the highlights are the numbers that close Act II/Suite 2/Part 1 ("Scorpius Alone") and that open Act III/Suite 3/Part 2 ("A World of Darkness"). These numbers occur back-to-back in the storyline, so naturally they convey a similar tone--dark, brooding, and eerie. Because of their similarities, the Act III opening number does an excellent job of bringing the viewer back into the world that was left at the end of Part 1. (On a completely irrelevant note, the Act III opening number is in the same key and at the same tempo as Britney Spears' "Stronger", which I could not get out of my head as Part 2 began. I'm going to venture a guess that I don't think that's what Heap was going for.)

While I adore Imogen Heap and everything that she has released to date, her recycling of previous material seemed like cheating in a way. Yes, she was technically the composer, but the compositions were not written for the play or even with the play in mind. In general, the musical selections did appropriately match the tones of the corresponding scenes, but because the music was not specifically written for the play, one could probably swap around some of the musical numbers without any discernible effect on the story. Consequently, there was somewhat of a disconnect between the musical interludes and the scenes that they linked. Additionally, typical score elements such as leitmotifs (i.e., a brief, recurrent melody associated with a specific character or location) were almost completely absent, with the exception of Heap's "The Walk" appearing during two scenes set at the Ministry of Magic.

To sum up my thoughts on the music, I felt somewhat underwhelmed, because I was hoping to hear something new from Heap; instead, I mostly just got a rehash of her material. Even after watching it, that the majority of the music was not written for the play bothers me.

Overall, I'm glad I saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and I'm glad I saw it on Broadway, but I won't be the one clamoring to get tickets when it comes to San Francisco next year.