tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post2100762450993746622..comments2024-03-28T13:47:00.644+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (the book of the stage play scripts). No spoilersBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-90264641025999946632016-08-06T06:23:32.955+01:002016-08-06T06:23:32.955+01:00@David - Thanks for the recommendations which I ma...@David - Thanks for the recommendations which I may well follow-up. <br /><br />BTW On further reflection, I would include satire as a major type of drama, and arguably The dominant one through most of history and certainly today - and since satire can be either farcical or melodramatic, it probably requires a third category of its own. <br /><br />I have written fairly thoroughly about Rowling post-Potter on this blog - I think she has become that dangerous thing, an apostate who is trying to repudiate her formerly Christian self - to 'show the world' (i.e. the evil secular Leftist elite) that she is no longer *that* kind of person. Therefore I feel sure that she is incapable of writing anything genuinely good again. <br /><br />The Cursed Child is so poorly done and produced that it amounts to a shabby deception, in my opinion; a spit in the face of the HP fans who she must despise. You will know that Bernard Shaw set the standard, well over a century ago, for publishing plays so they could be read 'as novels' by adding detailed link passages and stage directions - Rowling couldn't even be bothered to do that for her loyal HP readers - Indeed, clearly she couldn't be bothered actually to write, nor even to edit, the 'prose'. <br /><br />As for the HP movies - I regard the series as entertaining, but a sadly wasted opportunity - since they have almost none of the deep structure of the books. However, there was a truly wonderful part of Deathly Hallows Part 2 from the death of Snape up to the 'death' of Harry which is about as good as cinema gets (before the makers ludicrously messed up the ending). Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-17025966684213287792016-08-06T00:50:24.093+01:002016-08-06T00:50:24.093+01:00Thanks!
I wonder how your saying "Like most...Thanks! <br /><br />I wonder how your saying "Like most popular theatre throughout history, the script for Cursed Child is at the level of farce and melodrama" applies to some (how much?) Stoppard - I've acted in 'The Real Inspector Hound' twice (in two different roles), and in 'Dirty Linen', and don't (considering your phrasing) know just where to put either on a farce-comedy spectrum: maybe both pretty farcical (which can be to say, 'comical', too, but perhaps not in the fullest sense 'comedy'- ?)? <br /><br />I like 'Professional Foul' a lot, and also 'Squaring the Circle' - I don't know much of his work since then, though I enjoyed Hapgood (in the version Wikipedia says was "a critical failure"!), and I've seen a couple of the films he scripted (and I largely love the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern movie) - I got cold feet when I got a chance to buy a boxed set of Parade's End at a good price, not know what the BBC - and he - would 'do with (or 'to'?) it'. <br /><br />You ought to try Murder in the Cathedral again, both in the audio version with Paul Scofield as Thomas, and (if you can find it) in Eliot's film adaptation. I've quite enjoyed both the Branaagh televison and the old abridged Gielgud radio version of The Lady's Not for Burning - I think the only Fry I've seen or heard performed (and I do like the film version of Lagerkvist's Barabbas for which he wrote the screenplay). Come to that, I like both the novella and play versions of Lagerkvist's The Executioner (or 'The Hangman'), though I've read rather than seen the latter.<br /><br />David Llewellyn Dodds<br /><br />P.S.: Thank you for this spoiler-eschewing review - which leaves me wondering what I want to do (as does the prospect of the Newt Scamander films) - the public persona of Rowling is so disappointing (as well as what I've heard of her non-Potter works, whether pseudonymous or not) that I don't know how much it might detract from the HP novels.<br /><br />D. Ll. D.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-4166692365908114262016-08-05T06:28:22.711+01:002016-08-05T06:28:22.711+01:00@David LD - I read or saw everything, and thought ...@David LD - I read or saw everything, and thought a lot about, Stoppard up to the early 1980s - he seemed to match perfectly the way my mind worked in late teens early 20s, and his wit was so imble and deep as to suffice for any other lack. <br /><br />But I find I don't enjoy him much any more (Jumpers and Travesties, which seemed so dazzling, have dated badly), and I don't like his work after the TV play Professional Foul. I suspect that he will only be remembered for Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, and even that only by scholars (most modern people don't know Hamlet well enough to understand the play, or its jokes). <br /><br />I couldn't make anything at all of Eliot and Fry's verse plays - they were a pure chore to read and left nothing behind. I would probably like them more now I am a Christian. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-78672907443725442622016-08-05T02:52:05.096+01:002016-08-05T02:52:05.096+01:00"I have read [...] most of the mainstream pub..."I have read [...] most of the mainstream published British plays from about 1945-80." In your linked post, you mention admiration followed by re-evaluation of "Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and Travesties": what of other Stoppard? (I've mostly acted in Shakespeare and Stoppard...) "If it wasn't for Shakespeare,[...]" - I know one Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead enthusiast whose opinion (stated opinion, at least) approaches asserting that Hamlet is basically of interest only in relation to Stoppard's play (!).<br /><br />What, out of curiosity, of Eliot - and Fry? (I love Murder in the Cathedral as text, old Caedmon audio version, Eliot-adapted film, and live performance - but as much or more as text. I haven't tried the opera adaptation in full, yet...)<br /><br />And what of 'closet dramas' and/or things apparently meant to be read rather than staged (Samson Agonistes, for example - which I have been interested to see staged, though too 'modernly'...)?<br /><br />"If it wasn't for Shakespeare, who would (except from curiosity) want to sit through anything by Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson? Or Webster, or Beaumont and Fletcher?" A very interesting question (or two)! Might we - if most of the rest of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature were intact in the same form (even including Shakespeare's sonnets and other non-dramatic poetry) - even be more interested, and rate them variously more highly, without Shakespeare to put them in the shade? I think I would be, in any case - if I got the chance (reading and/or seeing). I'd certainly like Dr. Faustus and The Knight of the Burning Pestle (and probably Sejanus His Fall) if I'd never heard of Shakespeare (as far as I can tell). <br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-63024130558637093442016-08-02T17:25:02.666+01:002016-08-02T17:25:02.666+01:00@Nancy - glad you found it useful. @Nancy - glad you found it useful. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-41721014108669369482016-08-02T16:56:42.065+01:002016-08-02T16:56:42.065+01:00Thank you so much for this analysis. It made me re...Thank you so much for this analysis. It made me realise that I would perhaps be better off not to read it.Nancyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01753132169585551910noreply@blogger.com