As Potter debuts, world is still wild about Harry
LONDON — There are fans with wands and wizard costumes, midnight book parties and throngs of excited muggles. Harry Potter’s magic is back.
Nine years after J.K. Rowling’s final novel about the boy wizard, Harry has returned, on the stage and the page — and he’s still producing commercial alchemy.
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a two-part stage drama that picks up 19 years after the novels ended, has its gala opening today at London’s Palace Theatre. It’s already a hit. Although producers won’t release ticket sales figures, the show is largely sold out through December 2017; another 250,000 tickets will go on sale Aug. 4.
“It is event theater in the truest sense,” said theater commentator Terri Paddock, who co-founded stage website My Theatre Mates. “You can’t turn up at the Palace Theatre and not get caught up in the excitement. There is such a buzz: passers-by stopping and staring … children with their capes and wands and wizard excitement.”
It is not just the theater that is seeing a Potter-related boom. Booksellers expect a bonanza when the script is published Sunday. Thousands of bookstores around the world are holding midnight Potter parties Saturday, and are reporting advance sales not seen since the 2007 publication of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” North American publisher Scholastic has printed 4.5 million copies.
“Cursed Child” is not a novel, and it’s not primarily written by Rowling. She helped develop the story, but the script is by playwright Jack Thorne, whose work includes the stage adaptation of a Swedish vampire story, “Let the Right One In.”