When the final installment of JK Rowling’s children’s epic about the orphan wizard Harry Potter came in 2007, opinions were not unexpected differ on many details of the resolution. Dumbledore’s death was really a poetic necessity? Not a backlash to feminism to pair the ambitious Hermione with an anti-intellectual slappis as Ron Weasley? If one thing seemed to all agree: that the little contrived epilogue which saw the pair Harry / Ginny and Hermione / Ron wave of his offspring on platform 9 3/4 was an abomination and a mistake.
this did not stop the JK Rowling from thinking that an eighth part of the Potter story with the starting point in this particular sentimental scene was a toppenidé. The result was the two-part play “Harry Potter and the cursed child”, all in all, nearly six hours of theater that is currently doing the rounds at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End. For all those who will not get the chance to see the lavish production was released simultaneously with the premiere play the script, written by Jack Thorne (including dramatized John Ajvide Lindqvist’s “Let the Right One In” for the West End) an idea by JK Rowling and in collaboration with director John Tiffany.
I think it’s wonderful that Rowling spent Potter outsourced. It would have been easy for her to occupy a raised “enough, enough is enough” -hållning against his golden calf, nervously trying to control his Potterversum, keep it clean and obesudlat. Instead, she has made quite a fuss the other way. Not only did she always encouraged the world of fanfiction – ie texts loosely based on her stories, written and shared by readers – that has grown up around her books. She also has importance for reader opinion in several cases, as when she went out and said it probably sued as many suspected that Dumbledore was gay, and thus invited to a kind of quite open dialogue with readers that clearly indicates literature magic ability to free itself from its creator, to be alive for real. And so now this play – a project that a less prestigious writers would not have taken in with tongs, for fear of upsetting the reader Corps. Who wants to even hear about a Harry Potter has become a middle-aged government bureaucrat with poor parenting skills, and – can be glimpsed between the lines – a pretty cool marriage? Is it possible to design a new generation of Potter, Malfoy and Granger-Weasley without becoming ridiculous and predictable? Only those who are bold enough to try get to see, and Rowling let anyone try.
To my delight, is also the play bolder than I imagined, if not bold enough to seriously surprise. Rowling / Thorne / Tiffany has created a story that in many ways have more in common with classical Greek and shakespeareanska dramas than with the friendly British fairytale children book -where the world always have time to be rescued in time for evening tea – like the original books based. The basic theme is the ancient, Oedipal conflict between father and son. The scene that closed the books and begins play – Harry Potter who sends his son to Hogwarts – appears in the play not be as saccharine as previously thought. Albus Potter did not feel comfortable at Hogwarts, will be placed in Slytherin house and feel as if he is a failure which drags itself out of the shadow of his famous father. His only friend is Scorpius Malfoy, drawn with persistent rumors that he would be the son of himself Lord Voldemort.
On stage, Harry Potter and the cursed child probably a grand experience for younger children, but in book form suitable script best for the older children and the old die-hard Potter fans. There is of course a voltage-driven framework document, which has to do with time travel and expiation of past crimes, but it is the psychological portrayal of the emotionally complex conflict between Harry and his son who is the play’s major benefit. When the adult Harry directed at a portrait of his son’s namesake, Professor Albus Dumbledore, and accuses him of callousness – that he left the baby Harry to the loveless Dursleys and thus made him emotionally crippled for life – well, then it is sheer Strindberg drama.
One of the biggest problems with the seven books of the original Harry Potter canon is that they are terribly predictable purely dramaturgical. This secure fairytale world where evil is also the Hogwarts school schedule is part of what attracted millions of readers, but also a sign of a lack of Rowling. She’s in the book binders not been able to renew and reinvigorate their stories, and thus it was the right decision to close down the shop when the last battle stood. “Harry Potter and the cursed child” however, is a spirited addition to Potterversat, and I hope that more of them will follow. Perhaps collections of fanfictionberättelser, sanctioned by Rowling, could be incorporated in the canon? The possibilities are endless, so let the cries resound among old and new Potter fans: Release Potter free – he’s ours!
Footnote. The Swedish translation “Harry Potter and the cursed child”, expected to be published in October of Raben and Sjögren.
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