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When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened at the Palace Theatre a decade ago, it was event theatre, writ large. Opening just five years after the epic last Potter film and only nine years after the even weightier final book, Jack Thorne’s eighth chapter of JK Rowling’s blockbuster kiddie wizard series compounded its sense of being a massive event by being performed in two parts, totalling about five hours of theatre.
Over the years, however, most international productions of The Cursed Child have switched to a relatively streamlined single part show, and indeed London is the only production left to have offered the OG two-part experience.
Well, ten years on and it’s time to bid a fond ‘avada kedavra’ to the two-part version, as it’s been announced that it’ll end its run on September 20, shut for a bit, and then reopen as a more streamlined single play – running just two hours and 55 minutes – from October 6.
There will clearly be Potter obsessives upset about this, and Rowling haters who will see it as a sign of declining franchise popularity. The truth is, however, that a two-part play is enormously logistically complicated for both company and public.
The fact The Cursed Child did a decade in this form – surely the longest such run in history – and will continue at the same, very large theatre is surely testament to its prodigious popularity. Moreover, and not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s no real reason why the spectacle-heavy story about the time hopping adventures of Harry’s son Albus needed to be longer than Hamlet. The prodigious runtime felt as much an ostentatious flourish to stress what a big deal it was as an absolute dramatic necessity.
In any case, you have the best part of nine months to see the OG Cursed Child, so if you’ve been itching to see it or want to do so again, you have plenty of time.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part 1 and 2 are at the Palace Theatre until Sep 20. Buy tickets here.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (the single play) will go on sale later this year.
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