'Harry Potter' Broadway play makes its Minnesota debut at a Plymouth high school

A play about Harry Potter, obviously, must have magic in it.

So theater students at Armstrong High School in Plymouth are working hard to create magic onstage, without access to the mystical resources available to Harry and his classmates at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

On a recent afternoon, the theater's stage and backstage areas swarmed with activity as students painted and sanded, rolled set pieces on wheels that look like walls on one side and bookcases on the other, lifted a trap door to peek at a hidden swimming pool, examined the wiring that will hoist cast members to fly above the stage, and tossed around illuminated Flying Orbs.

They were preparing to present a play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," the latest addition to J.K. Rowling's massively popular — and commercially successful — fantasy universe, which already includes seven novels and their namesake films.

Armstrong, part of the Robbinsdale School District but located in Plymouth, is among the first 29 high schools in the country — and the first in Minnesota — granted permission to stage the play.

"This is creative chaos," said Moira Smallacombe, an Armstrong senior who plays Ginny Potter, Harry's wife, in the high school's staging of "Cursed Child."

The show, which opens at Armstrong on Wednesday, challenges its cast to embody iconic characters — household names — in ways that are recognizable to audiences while also making the roles their own — and doing it all in British accents. "Acting-wise, this is the most difficult show I've done," Smallacombe said.

"This is definitely the most difficult show I've done," echoed Mars Harriger, an Armstrong senior and stage co-manager. "It's crazy how professional we are, and we're just in high school. Everyone is so dedicated to everything they do."

The play opened in London in 2016, on Broadway in 2018, and launched its first North American tour last month in Chicago. It has received lofty reviews and numerous awards, including 2018 Tony Awards for best play and best direction.

Armstrong's theater department won the opportunity to stage it by responding to an invitation from Broadway Licensing Global to compete for the honor, theater teacher Jenny Lovitt said.

As directed by the contest, the department posted a video on Instagram highlighting its theater program and previous productions. The video mentions attributes such as the program's emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.

'We don't shy away from difficult conversations," one caption read. "We embrace all that makes students unique."

The students weren't told what the prize was for winning the contest, but word leaked out after somebody spotted it on social media.

"They were screaming and yelling, they were so excited," Lovitt said. "That's why we do it; we want to keep giving them unique and wonderful opportunities."

"I was just blown away," Smallacombe said. "And I was like, 'How are we going to do this?'"

Written by British playwright Jack Thorne based on a story co-written by Thorne, Rowling and British director John Tiffany, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is set 19 years after the events in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final book of Rowling's series.

It centers around generational conflicts between Harry and his middle child, Albus, who forms a friendship with Scorpius, the son of Harry's onetime arch enemy Draco Malfoy. Scorpius is a "sweet, kind child who is not like his father at all," Lovitt said.

The two friends use a new version of the Time-Turner (one of the magical objects in the original series) to travel back in time and do what fans of science fiction and fantasy know can have terrible consequences — they change something in the past whose effects ripple through the years, altering life in the present.

"It creates disastrous effects, so they have to go back and undo what they did," Lovitt said.

The plot follows the friends' escapades and Albus' efforts to prove himself, as well as Harry's and Ginny's challenges as parents, with Harry learning to be a good father after growing up without one of his own.

"Both are discovering who they are," said stage manager and Armstrong senior Katie Spickelmier. The play reflects the "struggle of growing up in a society you don't really fit into."

Iconic, yet personal

Cast members are challenged with embodying beloved iconic characters while creating their own personal versions of them — while speaking their lines in British accents.

"Trying to put yourself in a whole different dialect is definitely a fun challenge for all of us — and trying to keep it appropriate and not silly," Smallacombe said.

And then, of course, as with everything Harry Potter-related, there's all the magic the production's tech team has had to figure out how to depict without the benefit of Hollywood's computer-generated special effects. They include the machinations of the time machine, a character shooting out of a fireplace, characters flying above the stage.

Lovitt and other staffers traveled to New York to see how Broadway pulled it off. It debuted there in 2018 as a five-hour play performed in two parts (and remains that length in the London production). It was later edited to a one-part version at three and a half hours, and in November will be presented on Broadway in under three hours (which is the version playing in Chicago). The high school version is even shorter, closer to two hours.

Of course, Broadway, like Hogwarts, has access to magical elements not generally available to Midwestern high schools. For example, she said, there was a whole swimming pool directly under the stage, which cast members reached via a tunnel, wearing scuba gear and emerging soaking wet.

"They had fires, they had water, they had all kinds of stuff," she said.

Armstrong's stage has a hidden pool, too, albeit a backyard wading pool.

They acquired the wires and rigging to help actors fly from a special-effects company that also trained the cast members who will fly and the people backstage, working the ropes that pull them up and let them down. Armstrong's production will indicate the machinations of the Time-Turner using a projector, whereas in New York the whole set appeared to be moving, Lovitt said.

The theater department raised money for equipment, costumes and other expenses through a GoFundMe page and from the Seven Dreams Educational Foundation, a community nonprofit that collects donations and provides grants to support programs in the Robbinsdale district schools (which are spread across seven cities).

Another challenge was designing sets, costumes, badges and other objects that evoked the classic enchanted Potter style without directly copying any of the designs shown in films, which are protected as Warner Bros.' intellectual property.

"We had to dance on the line of recognizable as Harry Potter, but also put our own spin on it, and buildable by us," said Miles Wahlstrom, assistant technical director and Armstrong senior.

The 40-scene play has a cast of more than 30 students. Another 60-plus work on the technical side — about double the typical tech crew — designing sets, props, costumes, lighting and so on.

All year, they've been rehearsing and conceptualizing and building, afternoons and weekends, up to 11 hours at a time, working around football games and band practices. Lovitt didn't even receive a copy of the script until August.

"We had to hit the ground running," she said. "It's the hardest show technically I've done in 30-plus years."

The students agreed that the show has been a challenge. "This is the most complicated play I'll ever do," Wahlstrom said.

But that's not a bad thing. "I think it's all of us living our biggest dreams," Smallacombe said.

'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child'

When: 7 p.m. Oct. 30-31, Nov. 2-3 and Nov. 6-9; 3 p.m. Nov. 3.

Where: Armstrong Auditorium, 10635 36th Av. N., Plymouth.

Tickets: $5-$7. https://ahs.rdale.org/activities/admission-tickets