Harry Potter and the secret of the magic money tree
Films that made £4 billion. 450 million books sold. And now a VERY lucrative stage show. Will J.K. ever stop milking cash from her creation?
OH DeAR. The owl has been sacked already. On the first night of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, a live owl escaped backstage and flew through the auditorium of the Palace Theatre in London, ending up in a corner of the dress circle, right next to me.
It was quite possibly a barn owl but, unable to see its equity card, I wasn’t sure. As owl minders thundered around in a bid to recapture the bird, it just sat there, blinking — well — owlishly.
After this naughtiness, producers promptly dropped Mr Owl from the show. Much like the former DJ Mike Read, following the West end flop of his 2004 musical Oscar Wilde after only one night, I imagine that he flew back to Berkshire and sat in a tree for days, musing sadly on what might have been.
Meanwhile, in this brave new world of Harry Potter, where dark magic is on the rise, an important lesson is learned. Children, if you don’t do what you are told, you will be punished. The question is, how much more punishment can we take?
After seven epic novels, eight epic films (the last book so very epic it had to be done in two instalments), three supplementary booklets, two new films based on one of those booklets, a website called Pottermore with more than 20,000 words of additional material, plus a Potter encyclopaedia in progress, one might have imagined that J.K.Rowling would have laid down her quill and congratulated herself on a good job well done.
After all, in Harry Potter she has created one of the most successful and muchloved characters of all time, not to mention one of the most successful film franchises ever, having taken more than £4billion globally.
More than 450million copies of Harry Potter books have been sold around the world, while the Harry Potter theme parks in Hollywood and Florida are packed every day.
Just outside London at the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, saucer-eyed fans can drink a glass of ‘butterbeer’ and see where the magic was made, along with all the props, sets, costumes and wands.
The Potter success is dazzling — truly epic in scale and intensity. And now Potter: The Play. Is there no end to the money-spinning wizardry?
Last week the curtain rose on the two-part play written by Rowling with Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. It is the hottest ticket in town, with performances officially sold out until May 2017 and tickets being offered on re-sale sites for £2,000.
Back in October, the initial release of 175,000 tickets broke box office records by selling out in 24 hours.
At the weekend, Rowling took to Twitter to placate those fans who were complaining there was little or no chance of them ever getting to see it. ‘If demand is there it will run for a long time AND tour — you’ll see it!’ she promised.
CeRTAINLy last Tuesday, on the first night, the West end was suddenly full of tragic grown-ups unabashedly wearing their Hogwarts school robes and the colours of the school’s houses. These superfans had waited for years for the magic to return and here they were resplendent, determined to enjoy every moment, no matter how silly they looked.
Inside the foyer, they were queuing eight deep at the merchandise stall, desperate to buy Harry Potter T-shirts (£19.95) and lanyards (£5.95), or pencils for a pound, fluffy owls for £15 and key rings at £8.95 each.
The amounts are not gasp-inducing, but you have to wonder when the Harry Potter marketing wizards are ever going to stop squeezing money out of this most prized of cash cows.
I’m not sure if it is entirely seemly for the people behind the production to approve of selling fans a 65p postcard featuring the show’s logo and not much else, but this they did and more (stickers, £3.95).
The only things that were free were the Keep The Secrets button badges, reminding fans not to reveal plot twists and spoil the surprises for other fans.
While I agree that spoilers should be kept to a minimum, it is still ironic that the famously libertarian, free speech-supporting Rowling always champions the rights of others to say or write what they want — unless she is asking her audience to keep quiet.
None of which puts off her millions of fans, of course.
Once in their seats, fans began cheering even before the curtain went up. When Rowling was spotted in one of the theatre boxes on Thursday night, they went wild with delight as she gave an evita-esque wave from her balcony.
During five hours of performance, I have never experienced so much love and goodwill emanating from a theatre audience, but Potter fans are emotionally invested in the franchise in incredibly powerful ways.
As Rowling has been insisting to the 7.4million followers on her everactive Twitter account, this new play is not a prequel. Beginning 19 years after the Deathly Hallows, the eighth story finds the adult Harry (Jamie Parker) overworked and harassed at his day job in the Ministry of Magic.
He has a fractious relationship with his son Albus (Sam Clemmett), who is going through his Kevin the Teenager phase.
Albus is so rude to Harry, a man whose wife believes he has the greatest heart of any wizard who ever lived, that parents will gasp.
‘What would you like me to do, Dad?’ Albus cries at one point. ‘Magic myself popular?’
Harry’s old friends Ron Weasley (Paul Thornley) and Hermione Granger (Noma Dumezweni) are also in evidence.
There has been a flutter of fuss about Hermione being played by a black actress, but she is excellent in the role, with the brisk authority one would expect of the grown-up shewizard. And if people objected to that bit of casting, just wait until they see the Sorting Hat and magnificent Hagrid, both cameos played in a roaring basso profundo by black actor Chris Jarman. Much of the Cursed Child action features the children of the characters from the book, who must now take their chances at Hogwarts — and live up or down to the legacy left by their parents. When J. K. Rowling was asked last month if the two-part play would make fans cry, she replied: ‘If it doesn’t, we’ll be checking your vital signs.’ Over two nights of cape-swishing wizardry, the preview audience in London were the first to learn exactly what she meant. When the curtain came down on the second night, fans were cheering more than they were weeping — but tears had been shed along the way. We had all been through a time tunnel of feverish, Potterish complexity, one that at times left the audience gasping with delight — and sometimes dismay.
THe pared-down production was studded with truly magical magic, from levitating broomsticks to bits of old-fashioned coup de theatre involving the entire auditorium. And when baddies appeared, as baddies must, the temperature of the theatre seemed to plunge in a spine-chilling way — quite a feat.
There are more witty thrills and spills than anything else in the West end. But amid the torch-blazing shazzam of spells, mind-bending time-travelling and feminist touches (Harry does all the cooking at home), there is a great deal of darkness, including enough violence to make one suspect the whole franchise has gone a bit Game Of Thrones.
At the centre of the action, however, is the oldest of themes: the troubled relationship between a father and a young son as each struggle with their own dark nights of the soul.
The epic play spans two performances, with the second part much darker than the first, and the official line is that the material is not suitable for children under ten.
Timid little ones who are just old enough to see the play will be frightened, there is absolutely no doubt about that — but Harry Potter readers know the form.
Rowling has never been shy of introducing black themes into her stories. However, perhaps it is all for a commendable purpose: to stand young readers in good stead for the bereavements and buffetings that await them in real life.
elsewhere, there were moments when the Potteresque quagmire of in-jokes and recurring characters left me confused and baffled, as if stuck inside a slightly incomprehensible Harry Potter box-set.
My 14-year-old goddaughter, however, like most of the rapturous audience, understood and adored everything. An artistic triumph of quality and style, it is another monster Harry hit for the unstoppable J.K. Rowling.
Is this ever going to end? No.