Author J.K. Rowling poses for a portrait while publicizing her adult fiction book "The Casual Vacancy" at Lincoln Center in New York October 16, 2012.CARLO ALLEGRI/Reuters
Harry Potter is 39 years old during most of the new play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. 39! Can you conceive of it? The Boy Who Lived is now The Man Who Barely Copes, a father of three of who is confounded by the teenage brain, unable to keep up with the paperwork in his office, and has given up sugar. Defeating evil is easy; midlife is hard.
Harry is actually 37 at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and he and his wife, Ginny, are escorting two of their three children, James and Albus, onto the Hogwarts Express (a scene that will be familiar to readers of the seventh and final novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.) This latest book, which arrived with much waving of wands around the world precisely at 12:01 on July 31, is actually the script of a new play that is currently playing to enthusiastic reviews at the Palace Theatre in London.
No, you can't get a ticket to the soldout play, unless you work for the Ministry of Magic. You can read the script, however, which is listed officially as "a new play by Jack Thorne, based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne." Mr. Thorne undoubtedly wrote the play, but as you read it you can sense over his shoulder the presence of Ms. Rowling, ensuring that familiar characters are given their due, new ones are made fully dimensional, and her beloved themes of friendship and sacrifice are brought to life again.
Is it good? Yes, it is thumpingly good, and I say this as a mother who read all seven books to her children and fell asleep more than once in the process. Ms. Rowling's greatest downfall as a storyteller was always a sin of excess, and here there is no endless "Harry, Ron and Hermione" exposition to slow down the action. There is dialogue, the occasional stage direction, and not much else. It's as lean as a wand, and quite as magical.
Harry, one of literature's most famous orphans, is feeling disconnected from his middle child, Albus, as the play begins. The fact that a father and son don't understand, or perhaps even particularly like each other, is a common enough narrative device. What's unusual here is that dad saved the world, and in the process got many of his friends killed. "How many people have died for the Boy Who Lived?" is a line that appears twice in the play. Harry has survivor's guilt, Albus doesn't know how to live in his shadow, and from such tensions great drama arises.
The other tensions arise from Albus's friendship with Scorpius Malfoy, son of Harry's bitter enemy Draco. The two lonely boys meet on the train to Hogwarts, saving each other with an unlikely affection, just as Harry was saved by meeting Ron and Hermione decades earlier. Spoiler alert: Draco's not much better in the fatherhood department than Harry. Perhaps Hogwarts needs to institute a class called Parenting for Wizards 101.
Much of the play's ingenuity lies in its blending of magic with real-world concerns any Muggle parent will recognize. When Albus is going off the rails, Harry finds out about it from a centaur, not Facebook. The dangerous distraction that nearly destroys Albus and Scorpius isn't booze or drugs, but a time-travel device.
To say much more than that about the plot would be a terrible transgression, punishable with a cruciatus curse. There are many neat twists and unexpected revelations, and Ms. Rowling has been urging theatregoers in London to keep their lips buttoned with the social-media campaign #keepthesecrets. I, for one, do not want to risk her wrath.
I can tell you that, thanks to the wonders of time travel, characters live again who we thought were gone; that Ron, now a father himself, is finally justified in telling the terrible jokes he loved; and the throbbing in Harry's forehead scar reveals that the world is not as safe as he once thought.
Even with all the magic in the world, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child would be as hollow as a Las Vegas stage show if there weren't a human heart at the centre of it. Fortunately, there is a heart, quite dark and very much alive.