#KeepTheSecrets

First and foremost I should apologise because I’m about to deviate from the normal theme of this blog. Although when we first decided to start blogging our adventures we thought about blogging stuff we’d seen, not just stuff we’d made, but I haven’t really felt the need to write anything about something I’d seen, until now. On Saturday I saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Now, whatever your thoughts on the global, corporate, seemingly never-ending world of Harry Potter, I have to tell you that it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. In all fairness I am a self-confessed Harry Potter obsessive, born at just the right time to climb on board the Hogwarts Express with him, live through high school, live through being a teenager (the fifth book where he basically only communicated in capital letters? That’s exactly what my brain felt like too.) all at the same time. So I am a sympathetic audience member to say the least.

It’s been just over forty-eight hours since I saw it and I have tried to stop thinking about it but it keeps coming back, constantly, because all I can think about is that I want to talk to someone about it. I want to talk about every bit of it, I want to go back over it again and again in minute detail. I want to talk to somebody about every movement, every look, every cadence in speech, I want to talk to somebody about everything I thought was wrong with it, every opportunity I thought they missed, every character who didn’t quite work, everything that didn’t quite make sense. And I want to talk to somebody about everything that was brilliant about it, everything that was perfect and sensational and purely, beautifully magical about it. I want to talk to somebody about every moment that made me jump out of my seat – I think I should have apologised to the people sitting behind me because I was the worst kind of audience member.

I should be so lucky to see theatre like that.

I should be so lucky to make theatre like that.

Because that’s what theatre is. Theatre is magical and transformative and transporting and it makes you gasp, and scream out and shout at these people on stage who are pretending to be something they aren’t. That’s what theatre is and I should be so lucky to make it.

In between the two shows I said I would have given my right arm to have been in the technical rehearsals, which I can only imagine went on for several weeks. There must have been something pretty amazing about being in the room when the magic worked for the first time. Because there was magic in that theatre and I believed in it. It’s magic that I’d seen hinted at before in a John Tiffany play. Peter Pan at the Festival Theatre, years ago, I had the same feeling then. The same feeling when I watched Peter crawl out of the top right-hand corner of the proscenium arch and walk, horizontal down to the stage. I felt that magic, magic that only happens in the theatre and while I can’t go in to detail about what happened this time round because #KeepTheSecrets I can say that it was even better. We all, everyone who makes theatre, be that as a writer or a director or an actor, we all wait for that moment when it works. It might be a line that wasn't landing but then suddenly it does and the whole play makes sense, or a prop that was clumsy until it became essential. The people who made Cursed Child got to experience that on a mammoth scale. They saw the characters click into place, the dialogue flow and they saw the magic work, they saw magic come to life. I would've given anything to be in the room when it happened. 

The story of Cursed Child was like finding a hidden chapter at the end of the seventh book – a hidden chapter that went on for several hours – and the best bit about it was I got to experience it with an entire theatre full of people. I got to learn more about that world at the exact same time as the people around me, which isn’t something I’ve been able to do with Harry Potter since I decided I couldn’t wait for my Dad to read them to me and started the third book in secret without him. I heard people gasp from the stalls and stood up with everyone in the circle to peer down below us and it was that collective experience that made it all the better. 

I’m so relieved that I loved it because I was terrified when I sat down. “Don’t touch your idols, the gold comes off on your hands.” That’s what I was scared of, I was so scared that this would ruin the perfect and sacred world, but it didn’t. I can’t shake the feeling that the world’s biggest Harry Potter fans were responsible for the production, because it could only have been made by people who really, really loved and respected the story. And (I say again!) that's what theatre is about. The best kind of theatre is made with love and respect and inspiration. So thanks to J.K., John Tiffany, Jack Thorne and the cast and the crew and whoever it was who made the end of the first play work because OH MY GOD. 

I count myself lucky to have seen theatre like that. 

I'd be even luckier if I could make it. 

Sweeney x