In this Minute about Cursed Child Part 1, Act 1, Scene 4 I’m going to discuss a little bit about a lot, because there’s so much that goes on in just this one scene, two years of stuff to be exact. So I’ll jump right in.

‘Thank Dumbledore’, um, please no. It doesn’t help that I don’t like Dumbledore, but this phrase just doesn’t sit well with me. I can’t help but compare it to the utterance ‘Thank God’ which would imply that Dumbledore has a deity-like status, and I don’t think it’s justified.

The Sorting Hat is an individual with a Bowler Hat. This was a questionable choice to me, but an artistic one that the director chose to go with. Personally, I would have done something puppet like, similar to how the animals were portrayed in the Broadway production of the Lion King.

There’s this stage direction: He puts his hat on ALBUS’s head–and this time he seems to take longer–almost as if he too is confused. I wondered about this, it made it sound like the Sorting Hat and Albus are confused. Could this mean that Albus is confused because he feels he does belong in Slytherin but that he can’t confess it because, like the rest of the scene shows, people don’t think that Potter’s should be in Slytherin?

And then there’s this brilliant piece of stage direction, right here: There’s a silence. A perfect, profound silence. One that sits low, twists a bit, and has damage within it.—love this, this is Rowling to me. These stage directions are where I see her most, there are more of these that I will point out in future minutes. (By the way, I’m counting this as my positive bit for this minute.)

I kinda love the commentary on society that this next bit of the scene implies, about how assumptive and judgemental people can be: Ooh, he’s just like his dad, oh wait, he’s in Slytherin, nevermind, he’s nothing like Harry Potter. 

So, Albus isn’t good at magic. He can’t fly a broom, he can’t do spells, and he doesn’t know how to make potions. People tease him about this, that sucks; what I don’t understand is why he gets mad at his dad for it.

This line from Harry breaks my heart a little bit: ‘But I wanted to be here…’. Harry didn’t have a family to see him off to school each year. He wanted to be able to do that for his kids. The fact that Albus doesn’t want him there is so sad.

Our first look at Draco Malfoy! And another mention of this rumor. Was Harry right to turn down Draco’s request? Did he just turn it down because the things of the past still haven’t been forgiven?

All the second thoughts I had about Rose’s character last scene go away in this scene. The way she treats Albus is a little appalling. I can admit, though, that it is a two way street, and Albus isn’t exactly trying very hard to be nice to her either. I have the same amount of problems with Albus’s character that I do with Rose, but I’ll probably get into that in another minute.

‘I didn’t choose to be his son.’ I thought this line from Albus was very interesting. A major theme of the Potter series is choices. It doesn’t matter who you are born to be, but the choices you make. This ‘problem’ that Albus has is kind of the opposite of this theme, it is all about who he was born to be, and his actions and choices made don’t matter, because no matter what Harry Potter is still his dad.

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