Harry Potter has always been a tough act to follow — even for its creator J.K. Rowling. So the conundrum was how to proceed after the record-breaking run of the last and final novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”The solution? Put Harry on the stage and set it 19 years in the future, playing off of the seventh novel’s epilogue.The theatrical production, which will open in June in London, is titled “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” and was unveiled last week on the show’s official website with this description: “When we last saw Harry he was waving off his eldest children, James Sirius and Albus Severus, at Platform Nine and Three Quarters. This next exciting chapter in the story will explore Harry’s life after that moment for the first time.”On that same website, the play’s producers went on to describe the plot. “It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”It had been previously rumored that the stage version of the literary and film phenomenon was to be a prequel. But working on the story with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, J.K. Rowling was convinced to cover entire new ground. So much ground, in fact, that the plays will be presented in two parts due “to the epic nature of the story,” and will feature a cast of over thirty actors. The two parts can be seen sequentially as a one-day affair or in two parts on succeeding evenings.Rowling noted in a statement that the “… story only exists because the right group of people came together with a brilliant idea about how to present Harry Potter onstage.” Included in this group is Thorne, a brilliant young screenwriter and dramatist whose New York stage debut, “Let the Right One In” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, won strong critical notices both for him and director Tiffany. However, what Rowling may have seen in Thorne was on account of his first film, “The Scouting Book for Boys” (2009). In awarding him with the Best Newcomer prize, the London Film Festival jury noted: “Jack Thorne is a poetic writer with an end-of-the-world imagination and a real gift for story-telling.”Tiffany is one of the hottest directors on the global theater scene since he won plaudits and awards for the Scottish National Production of “Blackwatch” in 2006. He went on to garner favorable attention of his revival of “The Glass Menagerie,” starring Cherry Jones, and “Macbeth,” with Alan Cumming. He won the 2012 Tony Award for his inventive staging of “Once.”Tickets for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” go on sale to the general public on Friday, October 30. No surprise if the website crashes and a yet another world record is set.
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