Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Another Harry Potter experience we had booked well in advance (3+ months!) was the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play at the Palace Theatre in London's West End. This was truly fantastic — we all loved it!
The play is essentially two full plays (four acts), designed to be seen consecutively on the same day or over two consecutive nights. Part One is 2 hours 40 minutes (including a 20 minute intermission), and Part Two is 2 hours 35 minutes (including a 20 minute intermission). Apparently the West End production is the only one that still does this — other countries have reduced it to a single 3.5 hour play. We saw both parts on the same day — at 2pm and 7pm!
As "good" seats for the play would have set us back thousands of dollars, we had gone for the cheapest option: four rows from the back of the topmost balcony. This came to a quite reasonable $238 AUD in total. The trade-off was that we had to climb lots of stairs, the balconies were so steep it was almost scary, and we couldn't see a couple of things that happened right at the front of the stage. This was our view (the stage is that blue thing in the middle)... 😆
Don't worry, it wasn't as bad as it looked! Sure, we couldn't see the expressions on the actors' faces, but we could understand everything that was going on and didn't feel the distance detracted from our enjoyment of it. The play was very, very impressive — especially the onstage magic!
Our favourite parts were: the magical effects (e.g. onstage transfigurations, people lifting into the air during fight scenes, characters disappearing into bookcases, etc), cute/amusing character interactions (Draco/Harry, Scorpius/Polly, Ron/Hermione) and Moaning Myrtle (she was brilliant!).
In between Parts One and Two, we had a couple of hours to fill in. After having a snack from McDonald's, we walked to the House of MinaLima, which is a shop displaying the work of graphic design duo (and married couple) Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, who made the props for the Harry Potter movies. Most of the displays and products were Harry Potter related, but their team has designed and illustrated some beautiful hardcover fairytale books too.
We walked back to the theatre through Chinatown, stopping for pork buns en route.
And here are a few pics from our walk back to the Tube station at the end of the night...
It had been another very Harry-Potter-ish day!