CC1.3: Rose, Rumors, and Role Reversals

In today’s Minute I’ll be discussing Cursed Child Part 1, Act 1, Scene 3.

Up first I’d like to talk about Rose Granger-Weasley. My first impression of her was a bad one. I thought she came off prejudiced and snobby, and while her parents were this way when they were her age, I didn’t think that a child of Ron and Hermione would end up that way.

The line that left a particularly bad taste in my mouth was this one: ‘I’m a Granger-Weasley, you’re a Potter–everyone will want to be friends with us, we’ve got the pick of anyone we want.’

That’s the way I read it at first, in my head it was arrogant and rude, (this isn’t helped by the fact that there are no exclamation points in the script). Realizing, however, that perhaps this wasn’t how it was acted out on stage I reached out on the Lexicon’s facebook page to see if someone could describe this scene to me. A clip of the play was shared with me, and this situation is a great example of how not being able to see the play live has affected my judgement.

The clip that was shared with me had Rose delivering her line like this: ‘I’m a Granger-Weasley, you’re a Potter!–everyone will want to be friends with us, we’ve got the pick of anyone we want!’

(I feel like exclamation points would definitely be put in here based on the way the actress delivered this line, I’m not sure why they aren’t).

So what I read as snobby, the actress actually portrayed as pure excitement at the possibilities of being able to make friends. This definitely made me stop and wonder if I had misjudged Rose Granger-Weasley. I do feel a little bit better about her character, but I still don’t like her very much. Her attitude towards Scorpius in this scene is not great, and sure she’s only 11 in this scene, but her relationship with Albus later in the play just doesn’t sit well with me; I may touch on this more once I get to those scenes.

Up next, I’d like to discuss this rumor about Scorpius being the son of Voldemort. I’m sure you won’t be shocked to hear that I did not like this at all. It felt a little ridiculous to me. It doesn’t help that when reading a script you’re just reading lines, and any stage directions, so this felt like it went by really quickly, that not enough time was spent on introducing this rumor to everyone. This feeling contributed to me thinking it was a lame attempt to give Scorpius a ‘thing’ for the sake of having a ‘thing’. But upon further reflection, I think I can see and respect what Tiffany and Thorne were trying to do here, which was doing a bit of foreshadowing and at the same time dangling a red herring right in our faces. I’m currently also rereading Prisoner of Azkaban and I find the rumor about Scorpius to be similar to everything we hear about Sirius Black. There was a nugget of truth in the story about the situation that got Sirius locked up in Azkaban. Upon rereads you can see that it foreshadows Sirius and Peter’s confrontation, and the red herring was that the situation was totally reversed, Sirius was innocent and Peter was the traitor.

The rumor in Cursed Child may not be brilliantly as crafted as what Rowling did in Prisoner, but it’s foreshadowing that Voldemort did have a child with someone, which we find out later in the play is Delphi, which makes Scorpius the red herring. Again, this seems a little clumsy to me, but I definitely have a better perception of this rumor being included in the Cursed Child.

Lastly, as promised, I will discuss something I liked about this scene, which is I think it’s really cool to see the comparison between the meetings of Harry, Ron, and Draco and the meeting of their children. Draco assumed that Harry would want to be his friend because of his name and status in the wizarding world. Harry, sensing that he and Draco had different values, denied the offer of friendship. Scorpius is desperate for any friend, and attempts to make some by offering sweets. Albus, realizing that he and Scorpius are similar and not caring about who Scorpius is, accepts the friendship despite it being the unpopular opinion. Additionally, its Rose that was saying who they are, what their names are, would be what gets them friends. It was fun to see the role reversals in these different generations of Potter, Weasley and Malfoy families.

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