Broadway Year 3: James Romney (Instagram: jamesromney) as Albus and Brady Dalton Richards (Instagram: toworkoneself) as Scorpius! These two were integral in the changes that were made when the play changed from two to one parts, making Scorbus’ relationship more defined <3
The cast of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” on Broadway picks up Chapter 6 of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” for Harry Potter at Home, and Jamie Parker is the narrator. Check it out!
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child NYC Recap 28/09/18 (Part Two)
Once upon a time the original cast gave me my favourite ever Part Two, in a show performed on a Friday night almost two years ago, and last Friday’s performance reminded me of why their Part Two shines so much. There was so much about it that lived up to the bright but distant memories I had of what they used to achieve when they were on form, as well as some gorgeous new details that made the show sing. So here, without further ado, are my as many highlights as I can remember from last Friday’s show:
-It’s quite clear how much Anthony respects Alex and enjoys acting with him. The second they were in a scene together he came alive (hilariously Anthony thought that office scene was his worst scene of the show — it was not). That office scene was precisely what I needed for closure with these two, and it was a lovely thing. I forgot that Alex doesn’t face Anthony when Draco and Scorpius are close up and talking about Astoria, instead he faces off the front of the stage, with Scorpius to his left all small and hunched with his shoulders up and his arms folded like he wants to disappear. And as they talk they’re shining with that silver light, and they’re uncomfortable with each other but there’s so much desperate love there, with Scorpius hanging onto his dad’s words the way he does with no one else.
-I noted the Rakie influence when Noma did the ‘I’m minister for magic’ line. It’s not quite as vindictive, but it is an authoritative statement of power to Snape and it’s beautiful.
-Floorpius. Everywhere. I finally remember how Anthony inspired that mess, because he IS Floorpius. Most of the Voldy timeline was spent with him lying on the floor, and in Snape’s office he actually crawled across to the door before he got up to go through it. He also sat on the floor by the lake during the Patronus scene, and once he was out of the lake and back in the real world, he stayed on the floor. He was down there saying hi to everyone, and sort of kneeled up to say hi to his dad, who threw the robes right in his face, knocking him back to the ground. Then when he realised the Time-Turner was missing he lay down on his front by the lake and scrabbled at the water with his hands. There was more later on, but that sequence was the best Floorpius I’ve ever seen in my life. The people around must have been so confused about why I was laughing so much throughout the entire thing...
-Time to continue gushing about Jamie and James! I missed Jamie’s angry Harry so much. When he explodes, he really goes (having said that this might be one of the most restrained shows I’ve ever seen from him, which was cool), and there was a moment in this scene when he fired up so much that Albus actually flinched, shuffling back, head bowing, body hunching up small. I’m always astounded by how tiny the Albuses can make themselves, and James is one of the tiniest I’ve seen. More on those two later.
-The first fuck up of the day was when the jump scare didn’t work — the hand went before the sound. I’ve seen worse, but it was less than ideal.
-Jamie Parker reacting to Harry’s dreams. I love this man so much. When his Harry starts to spiral he crashes to rock bottom so fast, and this was the start of the spiral. He woke up screaming and convulsing and clutching his scar, absolutely panicked, unable to breathe. You know he’d rather be alone with his nightmare but it made me glad Ginny was there to take care of him, because he was lost to it. And then of course the second he realises what the dream means, Harry takes off running, because Jamie’s Harry is the quintessential action hero Harry. He’d rather be doing than standing around waiting. If he can feel like he’s doing something, influencing something, then he’s marginally more okay. (The way Jamie Parker runs — a hundred times faster than anyone else on stage, leaving them all in his dust — is one of my favourite things about his Harry.)
-This was a fun dorm scene. It was the start of the adorable little Scorbus moments, and by that I mean the physical signs of a ridiculous friendship. There was so much larking about between the two of them, and the scene ended with the sort of play fight that I’ve been desperately missing since the original cast left. The handsiness, I’m pleased to report, continued on throughout the rest of Part Two, especially in Godric’s Hollow.
-One of my (many) favourite James Romney moments came in the Owlery Scene. Albus handed Delphi the Time-Turner, and the second she took it he sagged in relief and buried his face in his hands. It was clear even from the dorm scene prior that he didn’t want responsibility for it, and that he was desperate to find someone who would help them — Delphi was his someone. He called her, she came, and he was so glad to have an adult in charge of the object that had ruined worlds. I’ve never seen an Albus so pleased to have the thing out of his hands, to be taken care of by someone. In fact it might be one of my favourite ever little Albus things, because it fits so perfectly with so much of what’s going on with him at that point in the show.
-Paul knelt for the reproposal and my heart melted. It was also so good to hear him say Scrupius again (and to see everyone’s reactions to Ron’s infuriating speech in that scene — he was having so much fun talking about getting drunk).
-The maze was the first time a bit of blocking on broadway made me jealous. Although the maze itself has been lifted and brought to London now, the blocking is very much not the same. My biggest complaint about the London blocking is the amount of time the boys spend offstage — Krum hovers at the front of the maze for a while unnecessarily, so the boys aren’t onstage for the line ‘what heroes do we have within our midst?’ Whereas in New York, Krum leaves the stage before that line, and the boys arrive back onstage during it. On the night we saw it, Scorpius stopped and hid with his back to the hedge, while Albus peered down the other pathway, they then whispered the next couple of lines. I’ve never seen an Albus and Scorpius really trying to hide like that before. I’ve seen them panicked and running and hoping they’ve got away, but never truly believing it to the extent that they’d try and hide.
-Because of the new blocking, Albus ended up on the other side of the stage during the second bit of torture, and the ensuing encounter with Cedric. It was strange to watch it in reverse, but I didn’t mind it at all. I actually think that Ben might be my favourite Cedric. The pacing of this encounter was beautiful. There were so many long pauses that were held perfectly still. Ben and James worked magic with this moment, and Ben had exactly the right poise and nobility to him. I also really loved how Albus reacted to having his bonds released. He gave this little hiss of pain and relief and rubbed his wrists.
-Another great result of the new blocking is that now, when Albus says ‘no, wait!’ as the walls pull back to reveal Delphi with the time-turner, it actually does make some sense. He sees what she’s doing and it seems as though he’s trying to work out what to do about it before they rush into something. I remember talking to Theo at one point about that line, and how Albus can’t see what’s happening, and I definitely prefer it when the walls peel away simultaneously and it’s very clear that Albus can see Delphi at the same time as Scorpius.
-The second fuck up of the day was the Time-Turner noise not working as the boys went back in time with Delphi. At first I thought this was deliberate, and I actually really liked it. It made it sound as though something was wrong, like they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing. You could hear the reverb of their voices (‘your dad loves you very much’ etc.) but not the ticking of the clock. However, when the voices faded and there were still no clock ticks and no smash of sound when they arrived in the past, it was clear that something had gone wrong. That arrival in the past is way less effective without the smash of sound: the boys just sort of hurled themselves away and kept going, but it didn’t have the same impact. However, there was some great acting thereafter, particularly when Albus ran at Delphi and tries to grab her foot to pull her down. I also loved the amount of Time-Turner glitter that rained down on the boys once Delphi started flying up.
-The blacklight section at the Lyric is really cool. In London not every surface is covered with writing, and the stuff written on the ceiling seems to be a projection rather than bona fide blacklight writing. However, in the Lyric they’ve covered everything and it’s all genuine. From the balcony I could see everything, all the boxes lit up, and the ceilings and the walls, throughout the entire theatre. The most exciting thing I spotted during the short time we had to take everything in was a huge snake drawn on the ceiling above my seat.
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This cast come into their own in Act Four. I suspect that’s how it’s always been, but I never had anything to compare it to. It’s also worth noting that the best shows I’ve ever seen them do have been on Friday nights. So basically we picked the right show to go to.
-The one time Jamie P resists being action hero Harry is at the end of the second EGM. When he’s wheeled offstage then, he sits on the steps in despair, and you could fully believe that Harry would just stay there for a while, sitting alone on the steps and feeling utterly hopeless and helpless before going off to his office to start reading those papers.
-I actually didn’t mind the Broadway station master! He was incomprehensible at least, which is always fun.
-The Broadway pumpkin transition is a lovely thing. I haven’t seen such a joyful Sorting Hat since Ged left. He threw the snow up in the air above his head, so it sprinkled gently down onto the stage as he walked away. The other highlight was that James and Lily actually interact during the scene. After they play with the snow together they put their arms round each other, and they’re the last couple to walk offstage as the boys run on. It’s so sweet, and it’s the most interaction they’ve ever had in any version of the show. And as they leave, the doors fall into a new, jumbled formation, leaving Lily and James’s door (red, with a lion’s head knocker) right at the heart of the street.
-Some Albuses run after Lily and James when they leave the house, some fall after them like they’re tied by a string; this one walked trancelike in their wake until Scorpius caught him and pulled him back.
-For those unfamiliar with my current interests, Lily and James’s door in New York remains lit with this white spectral light, even when the scene moves away from Godric’s Hollow. This gives the effect in other scenes of the ghosts of Harry’s past haunting him. It basically destroyed me. If anyone’s interested in the full meta (which includes ramblings about the doorway as a link between Harry and Albus), it’s here.
-I basically paid $400 and flew to New York just to see Jamie’s office scene again, and it really did not disappoint. It’s not the sob fest of London (and actually the second part with Draco was the more powerful for me on the night) but oh it’s still wonderful. One of the papers fell on the floor and he angrily snatched it up. He slammed his hand into the desk on ‘years! Years I spent there’ just the way he used to. Although there was more terseness, a Harry closing himself off from Dumbledore, rather than the emotion of London, every single decision, no matter what it was, come right from the core of Harry. Perhaps the only person in the world who understands Harry better than Jamie Parker is JK herself. He just gets it on a profound spiritual level, and everything he does works for the character. This scene (this whole act, the entire show in fact) is one of the best acting performances I’ve ever seen. Jamie is just stellar and professional and a cut above. It was a true joy to see him again. Also shoutout to Edward, who was a great Dumbledore and supported the scene beautifully.
-I forgot how much I love Alex’s version of the second half of the office scene. He didn’t do the ‘mwahaha’ at the start, which was sad, but instead he did this limpid laugh, like he started off laughing evilly and then realised how pathetic he sounded given the situation so it turned into a mockery of itself. Draco mocking his own behaviour as an adult is great, it shows how much self awareness he’s gained. As the scene goes on, Alex and Jamie get to flex their considerable rapport, and Alex gets to show off his emotional side. I’d forgotten until halfway through the scene that when Alex is acting emotional he makes himself sound on the verge of tears (when he actually cries there’s no indication in his voice), and he absolutely got me with it. This was another scene full of long pauses and lots of space. Harry hesitates, wanting to say yes, that they should go, but when he thinks about it logically he knows it doesn’t make sense, and if he’s to protect his son he needs something that will really work, not just get more people hurt. This is one of the moments when Harry and Albus are just so similar — their realisation that rushing into things has got people hurt, and the guilt they feel for that.
-The Lyric Theatre stage is pretty huge, and the Godric’s Hollow doors are pushed nearly all the way to the back. I’m pretty sure this is part of the reason why, on Broadway, Albus doesn’t do his traditional thing of starting the central Godric’s Hollow scene sitting on the doorstep. Instead the boys start the scene sitting at the front and centre of the stage, right on top of where the lake normally is. It made for a more intimate scene, and I actually loved the realism of it. It felt like they were two boys who had been out in the cold for hours and were running out of energy and ideas, sitting together on the freezing ground and grasping at straws. This was also the scene where they most felt like friends, with a healthy dose of play fighting, high fives, and messing around. This, for me, was the scene where the Scorbus came into its own, and it was the best friendship I’ve seen Anthony play out with a cover.
-At stage door after the show, Poppy said that she and Jamie had been trying some new things that night, and undoubtedly the scene where they find the blanket was one of the scenes where that was in evidence. There’s a different rhythm to these scenes now, different and fresh, but they’re just as emotional as they ever were. In this one they knelt together for a long time without speaking, clutching each other, in tears. When Harry finally picked up the blanket and realised that it was damaged, Ginny was so heartbroken for him that she didn’t move away from him to look at the blanket for a long time. She held his hands and comforted him, before finally acknowledging the problem and looking at the blanket.
-One thing that’s relevant to this scene that I forgot to mention in my Part One recap is how this cast rewrites lines to suit them. They say some of these lines in ways that aren’t written in the script and in ways that no one else will ever say them, and that is in no way a criticism. One such line comes in the blanket scene — ‘and maybe I can come and find it, and you, on Hallow’s Eve’. Jamie rewrites that line to centre it around Albus, whereas the line as it’s written focuses on the blanket. I love that his Harry is making that effort to make this about Albus, he’s trying, and that minute bit of phrasing is an example of how true he is in his love for his son.
-Back to Part Two, and I just want to acknowledge the fact that Jamie still does my favourite thing ever, and it’s still breathtaking. When Albus throws the blanket up in the air for Ginny to catch and goes sprinting off, Harry’s head whips round, like he’s felt the ghost of his son running by, like he can feel Albus’s presence in the room with him, and he’s going to keep staring at the spot where he knows Albus disappeared because it’s everything he has to hang on to. It was stunning when I first saw it, it’s stunning now, and I missed that moment so much.
-I enjoyed the blocking changes when the adults arrive in Godric’s Hollow. Ron is placed with Hermione between him and Draco. When Hermione says her line about old times it’s clearly not directed at Ron, which makes complete sense because he was never in Godric’s Hollow. It also means she can act as intervention between Ron and Draco, and that’s exactly what Noma does. She stands between them, a powerful presence who won’t let them fight each other when there are bigger things at stake. It really does give her a greater sense of authority over the scene, and I love that.
-That. Malfoy. Hug. Somehow in the last year and a half I’d forgotten about the magic, the genius sleight of hand, that Alex does with the Time-Turner to somehow have his hands completely free and unimpeded when Anthony comes running at him, so he can just hug, unencumbered, and keep hugging and holding for the rest of the scene. It’s something that no one else has ever been able to accomplish and I still don’t understand how he does it, but he does. Anyway, Anthony comes flying at him hard enough to knock him over, and Alex grabs him and catches him in the air, and there are legs everywhere and it’s so emphatic and joyful and it’s so Draco and Scorpius. That hug is everything. It’s the world and it’s beautiful, and it gets such a reaction and rightly so. And once the hug is over they keep going, holding each other’s hands, Draco ruffling Scorpius’s hair, more hugs, foot nudges, everything, because now they’re together again and everything is okay they can’t bear to be physically apart from another second.
-It’s a different story with the Potters. Ginny accepts her son into her arms with such utter relief. She squeezes him so tight and in this performance he looked so tiny, even next to her, small and swamped in his mum’s arms. Then, Ginny reaches desperately out to Harry, who hasn’t yet joined them, and she keeps reaching out. He looks at her, then he draws his cloak around himself, adjusts his cuffs, and turns away. He’s not ready yet. They’re not safe, Voldemort is still there, he still has so much to feel guilty for. He can’t. And that is the story of how the Potters broke my heart at the exact same time as the Malfoys were trying to heal it.
-This show was all about pacing. Careful, slow, deliberate. The cast had all the time in the world to play with. The scene between Ginny and Harry while Albus was sleeping on the bench had every ounce of that slow deliberacy. It was such an intimate conversation, different again to how it’s felt to me before — Ginny was a bit harder with Harry (that was sort of a theme of the whole show actually), but he thrives on that and they get there in the end, to that place where they’re holding each other again. That’s how they always end up, because they’re a team, and they’re facing everything together, no matter what.
-I think the Transfiguration may have been done in a different order here, but I didn’t keep a note of who joined the spell when so I can’t be sure. I suspect Hermione may have joined earlier, as she was on the other side of the church in the preceding scene (standing right behind Scorpius so their impeccable connection on ‘you’re right’ was all the more impressive and sweet).
-One thing that I noticed for sure with the Transfiguration was that every time someone joined the spell and there was that awful sizzling sound, Albus flinched, like just seeing his dad in pain was giving him pain. I also very much noticed that as well as the strobe lights that we have in London, which illuminate Voldy as he emerges from Harry’s robes, in NYC there’s a matching strobe light shining directly into Harry’s eyes and onto his face. How Jamie handles that I do not understand. It looked painful.
-We travel halfway round the world and we still get Paul’s Ron checking in on the Malfoys while they’re keeping watch by the door to Godric’s Hollow. He just can’t resist interfering with their business. You also get Draco touching his son on the shoulder not necessarily affectionately, but more to tell him to remember to keep watch.
-I missed grumpy Ron lingering outside the door to glare at Draco after the ‘mildly enjoying it’ line. Thornley really makes his point with that one (as he always has)
--So in London, Jamie B runs directly at the Expulso flame, so he’s painfully close to it when it erupts out of the ground. He seems to end up right on top of it, deliberately going towards it, and while I acknowledge that this is for dramatic effect, it’s still very stressful, and I swear he gets much closer to it than is reasonable. Anyway, Harrys wanting to set fire to themselves is clearly an international problem, because Jamie did the same thing. It did look a little safer on Broadway, but I suspect that was partly to do with my distance from and angle to the stage. One day someone’s going to slip or run an inch too far, and then it’ll be the bench all over again except there’ll be fire involved this time.
-I dearly missed Jamie’s screams in the death scene. No one can scream like Jamie P. He’s a master of it. He channels every ounce of Harry’s pain until you feel it like it’s your own pain. I’d like to say that I know exactly what Paul and Noma and Alex and Anthony were doing in this scene, but let’s be honest, I was clinging to my seat as the Potters ripped my heart out.
-This was actually the site of another of my favourite little Albus things too. When Harry fell, Albus didn’t go with him straight away, and he lost all physical contact with him in the process. He stayed standing, awkwardly, sort of glancing at the house like he didn’t know what to do. Then he slowly bent down and hovered his hands over his dad’s back, like he desperately wanted to touch him but wasn’t sure if he was allowed. Finally he dared to touch his dad’s back, and when he did he melted down onto the ground next to him and that was how they were when the lights faded, father and son, finally connected.
-I never thought I’d use this word to describe Anthony or his Scorpius, but there’s only one way to describe his descent down the stairs towards Rose in the penultimate scene: smooth. Of course smooth is a very relative term. Basically what I mean is that when he hurled himself down the stairs he didn’t look like he was putting himself in physical danger like he used to. There was no falling, no awkward splits, he just ended up sitting on the step with his cloak wrapped round himself, attempting to look suave. But there was something impressively slick about the manoeuvre. It’s been well practiced.
-I forgot how much I love the slow hug. I remember very clearly the first time I watched that one (it might have been the first time it happened because I remember not being alone that day and I remember everyone else also freaking out). Scorpius slowly, deliberately walking up the stairs to Albus like he’s doubting himself every step of the way but that he won’t be stopped by anything. And when he gets to Albus he stands on the step below and he reaches out and awkwardly leans in and administers a tight hug that wraps round Albus’s body and arms, and renders him incapable of hugging back or escaping until Scorpius realises what he’s doing and runs away. That was the quality of the hug on Friday night, and I wasn’t prepared to be reminded of how much I miss it.
-I’m sure I’ve mentioned the back wall of the stage in recaps before, once I was going to write a full on meta post about it but I never finished it, but if you haven’t seen me talk about this before, here’s some context. In the final scenes of the play (once upon a time from when the burning bed emerged from the floor but now only for the very last scene) the brick wall at the back of the stage peels away from the wood panelling below it to create a gap. In London this always gave the impression of extra space, but mostly of the stage becoming the ruins of Lily and James’s house and then a sort of framework, a scaffolding or structure for Harry and Albus to grow their new relationship around. Everything had been torn away, destroyed when Voldemort cursed the baby Harry, and now they were left with the raw materials to start over. In New York, where the stage is enormous and the wall pulls back a lot further, I got a different feeling. It made the space Harry and Albus meet in during the final scene feel very much outside, but somehow contained, like the sunlight was streaming through cloister windows or over a garden wall. It felt like the graveyard was contained within a courtyard at the centre of the castle or perhaps a walled garden in the grounds. It gave the final scene such a strong sense of setting, and it was beautiful. That scene felt new and unique, airy and bright, which is appropriate because it is absolutely all of those things.
-I have always loved with a passion the way Jamie does the ‘and I know that heart is a good one’ line. He did it differently in this performance, with a ferocity, no pauses, tearing straight through like he had to make his point and have Albus hear him. When he zipped up Albus’s jacket and ruffled his hair he was almost rough with it, rough and forceful and desperate, but then when he was done there was a long moment where they just looked at each other, Harry and Albus, shining in the golden sunlight, Albus hearing from his dad that he’s a good person and actually believing him for the very first time. The long beat of silence felt so bright and warm and hopeful, and then Albus bowed his head in a nod and Harry knew he’d understood and they moved on. I suppose the point of this description is to say that it was different but no less beautiful than ever before.
-Of my favourite James Romney lines, the pigeon racing line has to be well up there. I’ve talked about the pacing in this performance before and how masterful it was, well this was one of the bits where the pacing of lines really changed how the characters reacted. Here Albus said ‘I’m not going to be a wizard dad’, and then he stopped for a good second while his dad’s expression changed to confusion and horror. He toyed with him for a moment before finally making it clear that he was joking: ‘I’m going into pigeon racing’, and Harry was flooded with relief as he realised his son was teasing him. I think that might actually be my favourite pigeon racing line. There was that something to it that made it more than just an awkward joke.
-I can’t not mention the final hug, which was one of those ones where Harry took hold of Albus and hugged every inch of him, squeezing his body tight and cradling his head. I love it when they give us those hugs at the end of everything, and it’s pure beautiful relief.
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To sum up, I’m so glad I went. There were things that I didn’t like about this performance, which I haven’t mentioned above and don’t really intend to discuss apart from in person. But on the whole and on reflection, I got everything out of my trip to New York that I wanted. I saw Jamie and Poppy and Paul again. I fell in love with Noma in a new way. I got my closure on Alex and Anthony. And I met a wonderful new Albus (I have now seen every Albus so far). There was nothing more I could have wished for from it, and I know that other people haven’t necessarily felt the same, but that was my personal response.
This performance gave me everything I always want in a performance of this show: it taught me new things about the characters and allowed me to explore in new ways the story I love. It also let me reconnect with a cast that I’d forgotten how much I love. The original cast do something to me, they give me this ability to see the show with such clarity, they sharpen my focus and my memory, and when I see them they make me want to write and write and keep writing until I’ve chronicled every tiny detail of their immensely rich performance. I love that about them. It’s unique to them, and no other cast will be able to do that for me. Cast two felt like home, cast three make me so immersed in the story and emotionally connected to it, and the original cast bring out some kind of intellectual depth in the show that captures and fires my imagination. They did that for me over two days in New York and I’m immensely grateful for that.
It’s also worth saying that I’ve thought a lot about the fact that James Romney will be the only Albus I ever see just once. I’m certain I’ll see Ryan again in London, and all the others I’ve seen multiple times. At first I didn’t know how I felt about it. I loved his performance so much that I thought I would be sad or feel like I was missing out, and I do a little bit. I wish I could see him many more times and find every little nuance in what he does. But actually, now, I’m happy that I get to have these glowing memories of his performance. He will always be the Albus whose performance is locked in my memory, that I will never be able to go back to. The memories will remain untarnished, unexplored, because I can’t look further than I did in those five hours, and that’s kind of cool. I will see his Albus though rose-tinted glasses, and maybe I’ll forever love him unreasonably, but that’s alright. Maybe that’s how other people who only see the show once and love it feel about everyone and everything involved. It’s fun to be able to get a glimpse into that world for once...
