Beautiful Torture: London, England, 9.8-13.8.2016 part 1

Warning: This post contains spoilers from the show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

This is a translated version of this. I fulfilled my dream and visited London and I have to say I was not disappointed. At the Monday evening is went to Helsinki-Vantaa airport and spent the night there with my friend Pipsa. I was there at 12 AM, I could have gone later but the buses from Kotka did not go later than that since the flight was 7:40 AM(nowadays I live in Espoo and going to the airport is so much easier, it literally takes 30 minutes). I spent the night at the airport and loaded my phone until we got to the flight. The flight was easy, I listened music the whole trip and then we landed on the Heathrow airport, which was little bit disappointing for me. The airport was somehow worse organized than the Finnish Helsinki-Vantaa, and confusing too. It took us a while to understand where the metro was. We took Oyster Card with us, and I loaded the machine 30 pounds that was quite enough. We arrived Camden easily, when we needed to change the metro only once. We were at Camden at 12 PM, and we had no internet so we did not know where to go. We decided to go to Subway, which was next to the metro. The British Subway was bit confusing; all the breads were different than in Finland, I think flatbread was the only one that we have. I ordered chicken breast, which they put a lot more than put in in Finland. I took bread called Italian, and it tasted good. We walked a lot in a wrong direction since we did not have internet. The hotel was pretty much the only place we had internet. There were a lot if Wi-Fi's, but they did not work. The hotel room was tiny, only 11 square meter. But it was fine. The hotel room wasn't super cheap, but I heard later on that in London hotels are mostly bad.

Few pictures of our hotel room. The shower was extremely tiny and and the bathroom door did not open completely because the bed was in the way.

After we left our luggage to the hotel room we went to search for gothic shops. That was the reason I had booked the hotel to Camden and from all the shops I was looking for three of them. We sometimes had Wi-Fi, and we followed Google Maps. But Google Maps made us walk crisscross, when we arrived to the place where the shop was supposed to be it showed that the shop was somewhere else. We finally found one shop, but the clothes were too small for me and I don't really care for New Rock boots. At downstairs there bigger clothes but they were not goth clothes. They had pin-up dresses and other clothes that were not my style. Nearby there was a shop of New Rock that had a huge boot on top of it (sorry no picture) but like I said I do not care for their shoes. There was also some sort of gothic corset shop but I did not go there either because my feet were so sore after walking almost ten hours.

Picture of my myself I took before I went to the play. The sunlight makes my lipstick a lot lighter red that it is supposed to be, but oh well.

The next day we went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a thing I was looking for and my reason to go to London. I woke up at 12 PM, and we had two hours to go. But because of my stupidity and because the West End station was not called West End we managed to miss the first 30 minutes of the show. We sat 10 minutes front of a TV, and then we got to the stand. All that we missed was Albus (Sam Clemmett) sorting to Slytherin. It would have been interesting to see other characters' reaction to this, but next time. The play was well made and especially the actress for Hermione (Noma Dumezweni) did her job well. Scorpius (Anthony Boyle) was great, he became one of my favorite Harry Potter characters, and the special effects were one of the best I've ever seen in a play or musical. But not everything was pink marshmallow. The play got critiziced it felt like fanfiction, and it really did. Harry (Alex Price) was strange all the time, he yelled at Albus for nothing and threatened the teachers in Hogwarts. And while the play had been made with a big budget, at the end it felt like they run out of money. When Albus and Scorpius were at the last trial at the Triwizard Tournament, the bushes that worked as fances were the same what were been used as stone walls in Hogwarts and other scenes. At the end when Albus and Harry were at graveyard suitcases were used as tombstones. I did not even get that they were at a graveyard before it was said.

My favorite scene was the first ten minutes at the beginning of the second act. In that scene Scorpius gets into an alternative reality where Voldemort (Paul Bentall) won the war. It was so funny when kind and silly Scorpius was a Deatheater the other students admired and feared whose idea was that muggles were tortured in the dungeons. Scorpius and the Deatheaters had awesome clothes in this scene, black robe with green chest. Too bad I did not a picture of the clothes, so beautiful they were. I found it funny that Umbridge (Helena Lymbery) was the headmistress of Hogwarts. I was little bit disappointed with the costume choice for Umbridge, they could have made a very over the top pink costume, but they did not. The casting was great and only few characters felt wrongly cast. I liked the actors for Harry, Ron (Paul Thornley) and Hermione, even though they felt bit old for acting characters in their 40s. Snape (Paul Bentall), Voldemort and Dumbledore (Barry McCarthy) were the only ones whose casting I did not like. From the movies I have an image that Snape talks in certain way and with low voice. Even though his costume was great, I did not like the actor. He did not felt like Snape at all. I had kind of the same problem with Dumbledore. He was not wise in a way that he should be, and at some point he was telling jokes making him feel like a comic relief character. Voldemort was the biggest disappointment. The makeup was nice, even though they could not create the same effect as with CGI, but his way of yelling instead of talking was ridiculous. This version of Voldemort was not threatening at all, and I was disappointed.

The plot felt like fanfiction at some points. The first act I sort of believed since Scorpius and Albus were 16 years old. I missed the first 20 minutes, so I did not completely understood the beginning, but Amos Diggory (Barry McCarthy) was sad because his son was dead and Albus and Scorpius decide to stop him dying at the Triwizard Tournament. It felt weird that they went through so much trouble to save someone who had died before they were born. And why Cedric (Tom Milligan)? I thought Albus would rather save Sirius, who was Harry's friend and his godfather.

The main plot was fucking awful. The main plot was about Voldemort and Bellatrix's daughter. Yes, you read right, Voldemort and Bellatrix's daughter. I could not decide did I like Delphi (Esther Smith) or not. There was nothing wrong with her, but I did not understand she was supposed to be a lot older than the boys before it got said. She looked only few years older than Albus and Scorpius and acted like a teenager. Of course she was just pretending, she had inherited her fathers lying skills, but when the big revelation came, I wanted to facepalm. I don't know what kind of villain I was expecting, but I did not want to go back to the old, and Voldemort's daughter as an idea was so idiotic I don't even know how Rowling accepted it. Delphi had lived with muggles, and that's why she did have a blonde-blue hair instead of dark hair, but she did not resemble her parents at all.

They also showed us dementors, which I liked a lot. The special effects were really good. The demenors felt really real and they moved beautifully. They also showed dementor's kiss, which was nicely done. The play was amazing, the only thing I did not like was the plot and some of the actors. But I hope to see it again some day.

Then some pictures. Unfortunately only pictures from the theater, since I could not take photos of the goth shops we went to.