Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - SPOILER THREAD

Why do straight women write about imagined gay sex?

Come on, there are many possible reasons. Straight women are attracted to men and so some enjoy imagining sexual scenarios where there are two men more than if there's a man and a woman. Also, the power dynamics of the two genders don't come into play anywhere near as much in a same sex relationship, which often makes the relationships more equal in the eyes of women, making them appealing to write or read about.

Confused about what?

Being a bit old fashioned here but can we have grammar and proper sentences please. Otherwise I'll delete the lot. And stick to the topic or start another one. Thank you.

It's like a gay haiku. Nice work.

It's certainly interesting to see some people feel so strongly about it. I've written elsewhere on this thread that I, too, had picked up on a vibe between Scorpius/Albus when watching the play that seemed to go deeper than (my perception of) standard teenage male friendship. So the thing with Scorpius pursuing Rose at the end jarred with me too. (I'd just assumed the boys were gay and the play wasn't going to make a big issue of it, it was simply part of who they were and didn't need comment.)

You can certainly point to lines in the script that flag up his earlier interest in Rose, and Albus' interest in Delphi. But I sort of took those instances to be both boys 'doing what was expected', if you like. Also, as we all know, lines are lines and stage directions are, well, a pain in the butt to read - but the spin an actor puts on them in a given moment can lend them a whole new meaning.

Surely the good news for people disappointed about the apparent 'straightness' of the boys at the end of the play is that there's nothing to say a character's sexuality can't be fluid? (In real life, I know a couple of women who dated/were married to men but now are happily settled in relationships with women. And plenty of gay men can find women attractive.) I'm sure Rowling would argue that since the story is basically taking place in your head anyway, the characters can be whatever you want them to be.

Some creators are very open to their audiences having their own interpretations of their work (Mark Hamill's gloriously and enthusiastically open attitude to people's differing opinions on Luke Skywalker springs immediately to mind), some creators are very against it (insert any author who has gone on record as wishing fans wouldn't write fanfiction), and the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle. I don't think JK Rowling minds very much - and if you ask her, I'm sure she'd agree - when audiences have their own realities based on her original works, but at the same time, I don't think any creator who has completely relinquished their art-baby into the wild for the audiences to shape in their own minds would come up with something like Pottermore, or keep dropping snippets of information that never had anything to do with the books in interviews years later. Hamlet belongs to us now, because Shakespeare finished with it (after several versions, also he died), but while Rowling lives, she will never give up ownership of the Harry Potter universe. She'll always be there to say "no, your idea that Dumbledore once loved a Muggle girl is wrong, because even though his sexuality was never featured in my books, he's still factually canonically gay". I'm absolutely not criticising her for it, she clearly loves it which is something a great many people can identify with, but if she had truly let it go for audiences' own truths to be true for them, then she probably wouldn't even have been involved in The Cursed Child.

I was thinking of when the casting for the play was revealed and people were ranting about Hermione being black. As part of her response, Rowling told a story about a little girl she'd met one time who had a totally different mental picture of (might have been) Neville than he was physically described in the books. And Rowling basically shrugged and went, 'you know what, that's entirely up to her as a reader'. So in that sense, if I think Scorpius/Albus are gay, and my friend thinks the two of them are straight, I'd gamble it wouldn't matter much to Rowling either way...?

(I'm not looking for this to descend into an 'I'm right, you're wrong' argument as has happened elsewhere on this forum, by the way. This thread has been refreshingly free of that, and long may it continue! Just trying to put my point more clearly if I wasn't clear before, because I was posting in a rush!)

Ahhh, I'm with you, Jean. I confess I'd forgotten about that anecdote! I guess she has her own opinions how things are, and can tell you what she officially thinks, but she's also fully aware how the relationship between reader and book works and isn't going to put the kibosh on a reader's experience (though is happy to tell Warner Bros off when it's something that's important to her).

I agree that this has (for the most part) been an excellent thread of open-ended conversation so far, I've been enjoying it hugely.

Gaybaiting... Who'd have thought Harry Potter would become be accused by the guardian of gaybaiting. Its really interesting to see how many people have picked up on a brewing homosexual romance between the two characters. My friend who'd only read the script said that it was really noticeable from there. Clearly I was being a bit obtuse in not thinking about it when I saw the play. Although in my defence I suppose that I would never have considered them making the two central characters having a gay romance the centre of such a high profile mainstream show. Now I keep thinking how absolutely amazing it would've been if that's what they'd done.

I suppose there's always Cursed Child part 3.

I believe someone made a similar point earlier in the thread, but please think about the effect of what you post. I think it probably goes without saying that a fairly significant proportion of people who read this board are gay. And many of them will have known this (and quite probably struggled with it) at around the age of the characters portrayed in this play. I'm sure some will have had feelings for their "young school mates" and won't appreciate being belittled in this way. Wanting to see something of yourself in a piece of art does not make you "PC crazy lefty".

I say this as somebody who is now married to her female best friend from secondary school.

As I have said previously on here, I did think they were going there for a brief moment but I don't think it was intentional. I believe the characters were written straight. I was slightly disappointed that they didn't take the storyline in that direction. It has always sat uneasily with me that JKR felt the need to out Dumbledore after the book series was written. That felt disingenuous to me. If she had felt it important to the story, she should have written it in. The impression her later revelation leaves is that she didn't want to take a risk on introducing something like that into a children's book. Which is fine. The story didn't need it and she had no moral obligation to take on any sort of LGBT cause. But saying it later just feels like she wanted to make herself out to be ground-breaking. And it's all very well arguing that she thought that it's something that didn't need to be made explicit in the books because sexual orientation is not a big deal. Sensationally revealing this secret years later suggests the opposite. I was hoping that if she truly felt it necessary to introduce a gay character (or explore Dumbledore's character further), the play might be the place to do it.  It didn't happen, which is still fine, but I can completely see why people are reading that into it.   And as for "gay-baiting", that is definitely something which certain television producers are guilty of in order to keep up the ratings. 

A fuller response to my experience of Cursed Child on Wednesday:

I thought the show (I keep describing it as one show even though it's in two parts) excelled in terms of stagecraft and in terms of relationships between the characters. I was in the second row of the stalls so I could often glimpse how they were doing some of the tricks - the Polyjuice Potion for instance, and the Patronus - but I didn't find that this detracted from my enjoyment. From further back I would imagine that this would be very impressive indeed.

Jamie Parker is just wonderful. He IS Harry Potter. His performance was so moving especially in the second part. The scene when they all watch Harry's parents getting killed just broke me. Hermione and Ron were great too. Noma Dumezweni was very dry and sarcastic and this really suited the character. Paul Thornley was great too, so funny.

I LOVE the character of Scorpius. Albus was annoying at first (the character not the actor) but he grew on me. Delphine interesting at first but I wasn't impressed during Part II. Her character was a bit pantomime and not that scary or convincing.

This play is really about fathers and sons and their relationships. Yes, the male characters are to the fore and this should probably annoy me but it doesn't. If it had been written as a novel I'm sure the female characters would feature much more. As it's a play, they've got to focus on the bits most relevant to the plot. The last scene with Harry and Albus nearly made me cry and I enjoyed seeing how their relationship developed during the play: same with Scorpius and Draco, and even Harry and Draco.

My biggest problem with Cursed Child is the plot. I don't believe Voldemort would ever have consented to have a child. Bellatrix, yes, she'd think it an honour to carry the Dark Lord's heir. V, though... for one, I can't imagine him ever doing something as human as have sex. Some people have argued the child could have been conceived by magic, but I still don't buy Voldemort agreeing. He wanted to make himself immortal and he believed that he had done so - why would he need an heir? Why would he want a potential rival? From what I've read, I'm in the minority on this but it's a big flaw as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing the show in mid-August, I wondered if most audience members would have read the book but by the sounds of it, they hadn't. It was a brilliant audience - quiet and attentive when it mattered, applause at the beginning of each part (because we're Potter fans and we're so excited!) and at crucial moments - Snape Stunning Umbridge got a big cheer. Laughter at the funniest lines and a gasp when it was revealed that Cedric killed Neville in one of the timelines. It was lovely to be part of an audience that was so engaged, and not a ringing phone to be heard!