Broomstick, floo powder, portkey, apparation — all are forms of magical transportation that "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," the sequel to the Harry Potter books that officially opened at London's Palace Theater Saturday, could take to get to Broadway.
The play's lead producers told the New York Times and the Daily Mail they have the Great White Way in their sights, now that reviews from the opening weekend of its run in London's West End run are in.
Those reviews are glowing: the Times' chief critic Ben Brantley praised the play for its empathy, "the magic practiced so affectingly and entertainingly in The Cursed Child ... [that] turns everyone in the audience into a sorcerer’s apprentice"; The Guardian's Michael Billington heralded it a "thrilling theatrical spectacle."
After surviving the first days of its run, producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callendar are likely considering their next step for the production that runs 5 hours, 15 minutes.
"It would be disingenuous to think New York and Broadway weren’t part of our thinking," Friedman told the Times. “Harry Potter, the brand and the story, are as iconic over there as anywhere in the world, and, Colin and I being theater producers and Broadway producers, of course it’s on our radar, but where, how, when and with whom, we have no idea."
The play written by Jack Thorne — based on a story by J.K. Rowling, Thorne and director John Tiffany — is sold out in London through May.
Its script, which was released as a book this weekend, topped Amazon's pre-order charts for print books and its Kindle counterparts in 2016 and drew Potterheads to bookstores across the country in swarms.
In an interview at the play's Saturday premiere, Rowling, whose novels have sold more than 450 million copies, said she would love to see the production travel as a reward to fans who kept spoilers to themselves: “We really hope to take this play to as many places as it’s feasible to take it. So I hope a lot of them will get to see this play in due course."
.@jk_rowling talks to the #CursedChild on the red carpet at today's gala performance.https://t.co/vu2QP25Zgp
— Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) July 30, 2016
