Performing arts | Cotsen Children’s Library

Here’s a review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for readers waiting to buy tickets to the first United States production when they go on sale. The two-part script published last July was billed as the eighth and final installment of Harry Potter. It was a bold, even risky, decision to bring the saga to its conclusion in a play, but how does the story work on the page?The Cursed Child is slick, elegant market-driven bookmaking, with the numerous stakeholders’ claims on the title page verso. Everything about the design of the “Special Rehearsal Edition Script”–the dust jacket’s conservative typography, the shiny (but not too shiny raised letters), and the discreet touch of gold–helps define a new franchise under the Harry Potter brand’s umbrella. The enigmatic logo does not say “for young readers” as clearly as does Mary Grandpre’s colorful artwork for the American Harry Potter jackets and covers. Could the script be trying to distance itself from the fantasy series for kids from nine to ninety? Some fans were disappointed that The Cursed Child was not a novel, but they should have been tipped off by the credits at the end that figure in playbills–original London cast, production credits down to the chaperones and house seats assistant, biographies of the original story team (Rowling, Tiffany, and Thorne), plus acknowledgments.

Is the script of The Cursed Child for Potterheads only? It certainly helps to belong to the fan base because the plot is dependent upon knowledge of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The chronicle of year four was dominated by the Triwizard Tournament, when fourteen-year-old Harry was pitted against his adolescent self, his friends, Hogwarts, unwelcome celebrity, and He Who Must Not Be Named. If you can’t recall much about about Victor Krumm, Winky the house elf, and blast-ended skrewts you can get by, but understanding how the relationship between Harry Cedric Diggory changed during the three tasks makes it much easier to understand the characters’ motives and in turn the plot of The Cursed Child.As there was no novel to dramatize, the script reveals the extent to which the wizards backstage fleshed out the eighth Harry Potter. With what must be jaw-dropping special effects as the foundation, Thorne’s play whirls from past, present, and a future that must not be allowed to take place. However the kaleidoscope of rapidly changing scenes shrinks most of the dialogue to rapid-fire exchanges. This is not a shortcoming in scenes where there’s no time to be wasted, like the surprising encounter between the Trolley Witch, Albus, and Scorpius. But the scenes with Ginny and Harry, for example, might have made a greater impact if the characters had been given more lines to reveal their fears and feelings. Perhaps this isn’t as noticeable in the darkened theater as in the living room.

The story proper begins when the inseparable odd couple, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, decide to right a great wrong in the past using a Time Turner, the magical object that played a critical role in The Prisoner of Azkaban. Dumbledore gave Hermione a beta version so she could double up on her courses and he also hinted that it would be rather useful rescuing Sirius and Buckbeak. Unlike the Egyptian tyet in E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet, the Time Turner is a precision instrument that either teenage wizards or powerful witches can operate without prior training. The boys are too weighed down by Freudian angst and the responsibility of rescuing the wizarding world to have any larks when they time travel: they return only to critical episodes in Harry Potter’s childhood to improve, then preserve the past as it happened. There is a side trip to the school they would have attended if Voldemort had won the Battle of Hogwarts. The brief reign of Dolores Umbridge as High Inquisitor in Order of the Phoenix foreshadows these nightmarish scenes, whose secondary function seems to be bringing back Severus Snape for a not especially satisfying cameo appearance.

The alignment of play’s narrative arc with that of the novels too deliberate to be anything but a reflection of a creative decision to allow the audience to re-experience the myth rather than to engage them in the younger generation’s lives. Somewhat to its detriment, The Cursed Child is no The Year of the Griffin. Some of the new material seems coldly calculated to stir a frisson of surprise in an audience that knows the score: for example, on the Hogwarts Express, Albus and Scorpius become best friends forever at first sight, instead of being loyal to their fathers. The undercurrent of their banter suggests a strong mutual physical attraction, but it turns out to be a tease, which I hear let down young gay fans in Northern Europe. Scorpius’ puppy love for Rose Granger Weasley is might foreshadow intermarriage between antagonistic wizarding families and is supposed to serve as a symbol that the age of Voldemort had indeed passed.

Casting African-born British actress Noma Dumezweni as Hermione was another uneasy if well-intentioned move after the fact to make the Harry Potter series more diverse. I would love to see what Dumezweni made of the role. Granger may be the Minister of Magic, but deep down she is still the trio’s fixer and problem-solver. It is hard to believe that she has changed so little, even though she is the boss of Harry Potter, the head of the Department of Magical Enforcement. On the other hand, she is still married to the goofy underachiever Ron Weasley, which makes it psychologically plausible, if politically incorrect. Hermione’s situation vis-a-vis Harry was always reminiscent of Mary Lennox at the end of The Secret Garden, edged aside by the author so as not to detract from the hero’s triumph. It is ironic that Hermione–and all the other strong women in the Cursed Child– are defined largely by their men.

As important as a mother’s love or friendship between the sexes is to the Harry Potter series, in the end it’s a boy’s chronicle. The Cursed Child‘s dynamics revolve around the ties between fathers and their children: Harry’s struggle to connect with his son Albus is contrasted with that of Draco and Scorpius Malfoy on the one hand, and the inconsolable grief of Amos Diggory for the dead Cedric on the other, with Dumbledore reappearing as Harry’s most important father substitute. Equally resonant are the children who destroyed their fathers or those who longed to prove themselves to fathers they never knew. By the end of the play, the ongoing tensions between the fathers and children have been resolved to such an extent that the passions driving the seven Harry Potter novels are reduced to dying embers. In principle, J. K Rowling could write a novel based on the script of The Cursed Child, but we should take her at her word that this spectacular production really is the end. At least until the break out of a certain prisoner in Azkaban…

Who then is the cursed child? If I am right, the clues concealed in the text and the logo point to not one, but two characters, a male and a female. What’s your take?

Before the establishment of zoological gardens in the early nineteenth century, people living outside of London with its Tower Menagerie were unlikely to have the opportunity of seeing large exotic animals unless the proprietor of a travelling menagerie rolled into town. George Wombwell (1777-1850) was the greatest of them all. Around 1810 he began touring the seasonal fairs, where it was easy to gather a crowd. Eventually he had three units, each with its brightly painted wagons and brass bands, covering the circuit.

Cotsen recently acquired a late eighteenth-century drawing by Lady Diana Beauclerk that documents the visit of a travelling menagerie to an unspecified location in the English countryside. Perhaps the animal show of Gilbert Pidcock, which was on the road in the late 1700s, is depicted here, although there is no way of being sure because the wagon has no identifying marks. The showman gestures with his staff towards the enormous lion, whose head seems to be lowered, possibly exhausted after a long bumpy ride on bad roads. Wonder and awe, not fear, animate the faces in the little crowd standing a safe distance from the creature’s cage on wheels. At least two little ones are being held up so they won’t miss seeing the noble beast.

Lady Diana Beauclerk, ” A travelling menagerie.” ca. 1790? (Cotsen). Provenance: Theodore Besterman-Paula Peyraud.

The drawing is signed “D.B.” in the lower left hand corner and “D:B:” below the border in the middle. Those initials belong to the one the most celebrated amateur woman artists of the period: Lady Diana Beauclerk (1734-1808), daughter of the Honorable Elizabeth Trevor and Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough. She also has the distinction of being the first of the celebrated Di Spencers.

Sir Joshua Reynolds’ 1768 portrait of Lady Diana.

A number of her drawings survive and perhaps this one of the travelling menagerie is related to others she did on popular entertainments: one of a showman with dancing bears, and another of street musicians. While there is no reason to think Lady Di drew any of them for the delight of her children or grandchildren (nor is there any evidence they were intended as illustrations for a book, much less a children’s book), the drawings open a window on the experiences of children in the late Georgian period.

Lady Diana Beauclerk, “A performing bear” ca. 1790. The showman is jabbing the bear to make it dance. There is a second bear with a monkey on its back to the left. A trumpeter, who probably played to gather an audience, stands with his back to the wall. Lydiard House, Swindon, Wiltshire.

Lady Diana Beauclerk, “Street musicians” ca. 1790. The young woman is playing a hurdy-gurdy to the accompaniment of a tambourine. In the background a man is operating a peep show for two young customers.

Who was the artist of these charming drawings? Lady Diana would have been notorious even if she had not been part of the fast set of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Beauclerk has probably been the inspiration for many characters in Regency romances… Dr. Johnson dismissed Lady Di as a “whore” but Edmund Burke was more forgiving on account of her two dreadful marriages, the first to the dissolute womanizer Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, who succeeded in divorcing her for adultery on the third try in 1768. Diana may not have felt the need for absolute discretion when her husband was rarely home at night.

Two days after the divorce was final, she married her long-time lover Topham Beauclerk. He should have been an improvement over Bolingbroke, as the great-grandson of Charles II, a friend of Horace Walpole and Dr. Johnson, a wit, and notable book collector. But his personal hygiene was as appalling as his temper and Lady Di was frequently the victim of his rages. Even his friends said Topham was so filthy that it was possible to catch lice from his wig.

After Topham’s death in 1780s, Lady Di’s life must have improved dramatically, now that she was the mistress of a pleasant small house, a regular income, and peace to devote to a range of artistic pursuits. Probably her best known works are the designs she executed for Josiah Wedgewood, which were used on plaques, jugs, and other ceramic pieces.

She also created a series of nine drawings which were inset in the door of an elaborate ebony cabinet that Horace Walpole commissioned from Edward Edwards.

The Beauclerk cabinet, originally in the Great North Bedchamber, Strawberry Hill. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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Category Archives: Performing arts

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