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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child director John Tiffany has admitted that he and writer Jack Thorne had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to condense the play into a shorter version.
Earlier this year, it was announced that the play – which has been performed as two separate productions over a single day or two evenings – would be shortened into a single version that’s 175 minutes long.
The Harry Potter spin-off, which first opened on the West End in 2016, previously ran for a combined five hours and five minutes, with audiences previously being required to purchase tickets for each performance.
While the new one-part production opens this week, director Tiffany has revealed that both he and writer Thorne initially pushed back when asked to shorten the play.
In an interview with The Guardian, he revealed that they had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to rework the script, adding: “That was the reflex reaction.”
It wasn’t until friend and theatre director Vicky Featherstone gave the pair a stern talking to that they decided to get on board. “She was like, ‘Get over yourselves and just do it. It’ll make it cheaper and more accessible for audiences.’ And that’s the thing that I’m most proud of, that some people will come that couldn’t afford to see it before,” he continued.
Thorne also said that Tiffany and the play’s producers made it clear that they would not go through with the shortened version if did not keep the complexity of the original.
“And hearing that was actually very freeing – you’re not writing with an axe over your head,” he said.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is set almost 20 years after the events of the final book and follows the titular wizard’s son, Albus Severus Potter, as he struggles with being sorted into Slytherin during his first year at Hogwarts and living up to his father’s legacy.
It took home nine awards at the Oliviers in 2017, including Best New Play and Best Director, while the following year, the Broadway production received six Tony Awards.
Announcing the shorter version in January this year, producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender said that this would make the production “more accessible than ever before”.
“Now running at under three hours, the reimagined production retains its scale, illusions and theatrical magic, and emotional depth, while allowing more audiences to experience the story in a single visit,” they said.
Friedman told the outlet that repackaging the play was a response to the cost of living going up by “30-40 per cent since the pandemic”.
“The only way we could continue to run it in a two-parter would be by charging an amount in tickets that was unaffordable and inaccessible,” she said.
The final two-part performance took place on 20 September, and the new version will open at the Palace Theatre in London from 9 October until 27 June.
