Trip 42

Day 9

May 3, 2023

We have tickets to a play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace. It’s an unusually long play, shown here in two pieces (four acts) over the course of either two days or one day (with a two hour break between Act 2 and Act 3). We chose to see the play in a single day, thinking it would be a more cohesive experience. The first part of the play started at 2pm , ran to about 4:30pm, then a two hour break and started again at 7 pm (and another 2 1/2 hours).

There was quite a queue for entering the theater , but it moved very quickly.

The story is set nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It follows Harry Potter, now Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic, and his son, Albus Severus Potter, who is about to attend his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The links between Harry Potter and Hogwarts are found most prominently in Edinburgh, where Harry Potter memorabilia is abundant and some have found inspiration for Hogwarts at one of the schools there.

The staging, music and performances were outstanding. Though the Palace is a much larger theatre than the St. Martin’s Theatre where we saw The Mousetrap, the venue still seems intimate all the world is truly a stage as the events and the plot unfolds. They transform the scene settings on the stage quickly and it’s really interesting to me how much can be done in so little space to create the storyline.

After Act 2, the play broke for intermission and we tried to find where to eat dinner before returning for the second half of the play. We chose Wagamama , someplace we’ve eaten before and gray we thought would be a problem for time. Then back to the Cursed Child, where the queue for re-entry was already forming.

The storyline is here. With the play over, the crowd poured out of the theater and it was a good bit cooler and windy , so we were happy to find that there was a Tube station only a few blocks away.

Really, really enjoyed the play and the experience. If you enjoy plays and Harry Potter, this is an experience not to miss, so buy tickets in advance, as it was nearly sold out months before we attended.