Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Would Harry Potter make a good play? The films have been perhaps a bit mixed. Prisoner of Azkaban the best so far (but also one of the best HP books).
The characters are good, the plot gripping and the wants/needs objectives clear. However it is the world of the books, which is one of the most absorbing parts and the magic. I think this would be hard to reproduce.
The National went some way to achieving such a thing with Phillip Pullman’s Amber SpyGlass trilogy. I think ultimately it failed in completely conjuring up Pullman’s world but gained by dramatising some of the epic qualities [via a Paines Plough workshop via Paula Vogel thoughts, epic is one of the 7 or so (debate on this in another post) play structures that plays can fit in to, also linear, parallel, circular, repetitive… note also some story tellers think there are only a few types of story, I think Pullman has spoken and written on this – more in another post] and giving a great theatrical quality to certain aspects like the daemons as puppets.
I don’t think the HP magic will transfer so easily to stage, but it would be a great thing to attempt. If Jo Rowling even fancies collaborating on a play (erm, yeah, and I’m a defence against the dark arts teacher) I’d be up for it. Jo, if you ever read this….
So did any of you guess correctly who was going to die? And who was the Half Blood Prince? It’s probably her darkest book yet, (there’s some proper love interest too), the plot cracks on at a fair pace and lots of missing links in Voldemort’s history are sown up, however it does feel a little like a book preparing itself for the finale… in another 3 years? But for people who want to know what happens (and I do) it’s a good read. So I tend to agree with the Observer which said “if you like this sort of thing, you will like this sort of thing…” rather than the Indy on Sunday which called it flabby and poorly edited. Bring on HP7.
BTW For those who have read the book I have a decent theory on who RAB may be. Drop us a line if you'd like to discuss!
The characters are good, the plot gripping and the wants/needs objectives clear. However it is the world of the books, which is one of the most absorbing parts and the magic. I think this would be hard to reproduce.
The National went some way to achieving such a thing with Phillip Pullman’s Amber SpyGlass trilogy. I think ultimately it failed in completely conjuring up Pullman’s world but gained by dramatising some of the epic qualities [via a Paines Plough workshop via Paula Vogel thoughts, epic is one of the 7 or so (debate on this in another post) play structures that plays can fit in to, also linear, parallel, circular, repetitive… note also some story tellers think there are only a few types of story, I think Pullman has spoken and written on this – more in another post] and giving a great theatrical quality to certain aspects like the daemons as puppets.
I don’t think the HP magic will transfer so easily to stage, but it would be a great thing to attempt. If Jo Rowling even fancies collaborating on a play (erm, yeah, and I’m a defence against the dark arts teacher) I’d be up for it. Jo, if you ever read this….
So did any of you guess correctly who was going to die? And who was the Half Blood Prince? It’s probably her darkest book yet, (there’s some proper love interest too), the plot cracks on at a fair pace and lots of missing links in Voldemort’s history are sown up, however it does feel a little like a book preparing itself for the finale… in another 3 years? But for people who want to know what happens (and I do) it’s a good read. So I tend to agree with the Observer which said “if you like this sort of thing, you will like this sort of thing…” rather than the Indy on Sunday which called it flabby and poorly edited. Bring on HP7.
BTW For those who have read the book I have a decent theory on who RAB may be. Drop us a line if you'd like to discuss!
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