Lily HaeberleGreen

10-18-13Potted Potter Live Play ReviewWritten by Lily HaeberlePerformed at Sidney Harman Hall on September 14th, 2013

The Harry Potter series may have come to an end but the legacy of J.K.

Rowling’s stories are still being carried on in this 75-minute play summarizing all 7

books mixed in with hilarious improvisation, audience interaction and a big game of

quidditch. It started in 2005, when Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner, the play’s

creators, were messing around with little sketches outside of a bookstore while

waiting for the release of the sixth book. Many performances later, the show had it’s

big debut at the Shakespeare Theater Company.

The plot of this play is all the important information of every book presented

in 75 minutes and the two performers, James Percy and Delme Thomas, succeeded

in accomplishing that impossible task . Even if someone hasn’t read all of the

books, Percy and Thomas do a good job in explaining the main ideas of each story.

This play is anything but serious, jokes were constantly being thrown around

and references to other Broadway shows and movies make the play even more

enjoyable. Therefore, the theme of this play would be to just have fun.

This two-man show was well very executed by James Percy and Delme

Thomas. Percy played the hard-core Harry Potter fan, knowing every detail to every

book, while Thomas is the stupid friend who doesn’t know anything about Harry’s

magical wizard world. Percy and Thomas give off a very happy and cheerful feeling.

They interact with the audience, separating half of the audience into Gryffindor and

the other half to Slytherin and play a short game of quidditch with a big beach ball.

During the middle of the explanation of the 4th book, they called up two little kids to

the stage to participate in the quidditch game. They had to chase the Golden Snitch,

played by Percy, dressed in a big yellow sphere suit with a construction hat. He ran

around the stage until the kids tackled him to the ground. When Percy wasn’t

dressed as the snitch, he and Thomas wore matching black and white shirts with

dark jeans and black vans. Thomas would occasionally throw on a red wig or a black

cloak while impersonating other characters in the books.

When Percy and Thomas were done explaining each book, the same little

song would play and Percy would do a shuffle across the stage to represent the

switching of books. They played dramatic music during an intense scene and of

course the Harry Potter theme song once in a while. Whenever Voldemort appeared,

the mood changed with strobe lights and fog. In the final scene when Thomas and

Percy perform a parody of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, there was a big disco ball

and the strobe lights went crazy thanks to lighting designer Tim Mascall.

The simple set included a big dresser, a desk, a mini train and many other

small toys and props. Some of the props used were a stuffed snake, a wand, a water

gun, a mini car and a skateboard with warthogs on it. The warthogs were Thomas’s

mistake: Percy said he wanted a replica of the “Hogwarts Express”. Much of the

humor in this play came from Thomas misunderstanding the ideas of Harry Potter

since he had read none of the books. In his confusion he incorporates references to

other movies, such as Annie and The Lion King. The most hyped up prop of all was

the big, scary, magical dragon, which Thomas spent all of the set money on and it

turned out to be a dragon as a hand puppet. Set designer Simon Scullion must have

had a lot of work on his hands.

The director, Richard Hurst, had the actors fully using the stage, walking back

and forth, running around and dancing in the final scene. While this show was full of

laughs and humor, sometimes it seemed as though they were trying too hard to be

funny which came off as cheesy. This play succeeded in summarizing all 7 books in

75 minutes and it is definitely a show that any Harry Potter fan, “ages 6 to

Dumbledore” would surely enjoy.