Shrinking Potion: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 2-Part to Become a Solo Show in London | stage

For nearly a decade, this play has been the most epic fixture on West End theatre: a two-part play that runs five hours, including intermissions. But later this year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will only be shown in London as an abbreviated 175-minute solo production.

The new format is in line with other versions of the hit play presented in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. The one-part production will make it more accessible, “allowing more audiences to experience the story with one ticket and one visit to the theater,” its producers announced Monday.

Currently, in London, theatergoers buy separate tickets for each part of the play, with the cheapest total costing up to £30. The two parts (each with an interval) can be watched on the same day, with a two-hour break in between, or on different days. Prices for the new issue, which has a single time period, have not yet been announced. The two-part show will run at the Palace Theater until September 20. The one-part version will open at the palace on October 6.

The play – the eighth story in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series – had its world premiere in London in 2016 and won a record nine Olivier Awards. Rowling, who collaborated with writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany on the production, originally said it would be split into two parts due to the “epic nature of the story” set 19 years after the last novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

“As new Harry Potter fans discover these stories every day, drawn to their enduring power and deep affection for these characters, we felt this historic moment was the right time to make the production more accessible than ever before,” the play’s producers, Sonia Friedman and Colleen Callender, said Monday. “The re-imagined production now runs under three hours, retaining its scale, illusions, theatrical magic and emotional depth, while allowing more audiences to experience the story in a single visit.”

The truncated running time should also appeal to theatergoers with younger children (the show is recommended for over-eights) and those – not just children – with shorter attention spans. But even at 175 minutes, Harry Potter and the New Cursed Child will still be longer than many West End plays. Theater manager Rosemary Squire said last summer that audiences are turned off by long running times “because they start to panic and think: ‘I have to get up for work tomorrow’, ‘When am I going to get to the last train?’ etc… As an industry, we need to listen to that”.

It’s not just a problem for theaters. Earlier this month, Claire Baines, creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, said: “I watch a lot of films and think: ‘You can take 20 minutes of that.’ There’s no need for films to be that long. Epic running times have kept audiences from returning to the cinema after the Covid-19 pandemic, Baines noted. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened on Broadway in a two-part format. When US theaters reopened after the Covid pandemic, streamlined one-part productions took their place.