For almost a decade it has been the most epic fixture in West End theatre: a two-part play that runs for five hours, including intervals. But later this year Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will only be staged in London as a shortened, single production running 175 minutes.
The new format is in line with the other versions of the hit play presented in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. Its producers announced on Monday that a one-part production would make it more accessible, “allowing even more audiences to experience the story with one ticket and one visit to the theatre”.
Currently, in London, theatregoers purchase separate tickets for each part of the play, with the cheapest total cost coming to £30. The two parts (which each have an interval) can be seen on the same day, with a couple of hours’ break in between, or on different days. Prices for the new version, which has one interval, are yet to be announced. The two-part production will run at the Palace theatre until 20 September. The one-part version will open at the Palace on 6 October.
The play – which is the eighth story in novelist JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series – had its world premiere in London in 2016 and won a record-breaking nine Olivier awards. Rowling, who collaborated with writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany on the production, originally said that it was split into two parts because of the “epic nature of the story” which is set 19 years after the final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The producers of the play, Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, said on Monday: “As new Harry Potter fans discover these stories every day, drawn in by their enduring power and the deep affection for these characters, we felt this milestone moment was the right time to 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.”
The trimmed runtime should also appeal to theatregoers bringing young children (the show is recommended for over-eights) and those – not just children – who have shorter attention spans. But even at 175 minutes, the new Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will still be longer than many West End plays. Theatre impresario Rosemary Squire said last summer that audiences were put off by long running times “because they’re starting to panic and think ‘I’ve got to get up for work tomorrow’, and ‘When will I get the last train?’, et cetera … As an industry, we need to listen to that.”
It is not just an issue for theatres. Earlier this month, Clare Binns, the creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, said: “I look at a lot of films and think: ‘You could take 20 minutes out of that.’ There’s no need for films to be that long.” Binns suggested that epic running times have deterred audiences returning to the cinema after the Covid-19 pandemic. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened on Broadway in the two-part format. When US theatres reopened after the Covid pandemic, the streamlined one-part production took its place.
