Anthony Boyle's Scorpius: London vs. New York City

[eldabe]

In her short story collection The Girl Who Heard Dragons, Anne McCaffrey (yes, of Dragonriders of Pern fame) wrote a short story called Euterpe on a Fling. It's not a famous story, but the basic premise as I remembered it was that an opera singer sang a performance one night that was simultaneously broadcast on the radio, in the early days of the radio. And the audience in the theater was enraptured by the performance, and could not stop talking about how amazing it was even years later. The radio audience, however, apparently heard a disastrous performance from that one opera singer, to the point that the radio station actually stops the live broadcast. The opera singer dies that very night and the mystery is never solved. The implication I took away from the story is that there was something magical, otherworldly or at the very least hypnotic coming from the opera singer that night. Something truly special that only the audience experienced, something that didn't, or couldn't translate over radio. Every person in the audience remains grateful they saw a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Everyone who heard the radio broadcast remained hopelessly confused.

So. Let's talk about Anthony Boyle in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

I was lucky enough to see him at the beginning of the run in London, on August 28, 2016. And back then, when he was on stage, everything else faded into the background a little bit. And trust me, I didn't mind at all. His performance was completely unexpected, and I mean that in the best way.

I didn't walk in with any expectations for Scorpius Malfoy because I hadn't read the script. And now that I have spoken to people who have read the script and not seen the show, and lots of them are big Scorpius Malfoy fans. He's a character that's designed to be endearing. That said, like all stage performances, there remains a lot of space for personalization.

And boy did Anthony Boyle personalize. His Scorpius was a mad collection of twitches and nervous ticks, of weird voice modulation. He was such an oddball. Costuming put him in closely-fitting pants and I described him as a baby deer in his performance, fumbling and endearing and awkward. People noticed different things. torestoreamends noticed him biting his nails. I noticed him tucking his hair behind his ears. Everyone noticed his over-the-top gestures.

The thing that I think is most important for me, when describing the Scorpius I saw from Anthony Boyle back then, is that Scorpius was weird. I mean, truly truly weird. It's what made him so hard to describe, because as much as he was the "smart nerd" and "a bit socially awkward" he was SO MUCH WEIRDER THAN THOSE DESCRIPTORS IMPLY. When Albus asks Harry, incredulous, if he's ever met the Scorpius he's judging so harshly, everyone laughs and nods because WTF Harry have you EVEN MET HIM? SCORPIUS?

It's--I'm not even capturing the half of it, I want you to understand. It was indescribable. It was something magical, above and beyond the magic of seeing Harry Potter on stage. During the break in between the shows, my group of friends could not stop exclaiming about Scorpius.

Like, like, ok. Let me try to describe a few things.

When Anthony's Scorpius first appears on stage, he is so rushed and excited that we could barely understand his lines. It took until I saw the second cast before I understood the explanation of Pepper(mint?) Imps. Literally, he said the lines so quickly I couldn't make them out. Now, I know this could be interpreted as a negative? I can't understand the lines! But what I need you to understand is that it DID NOT MATTER. As a character, we were absolutely on his side. In a few lines of dialogue, some of which we could not understand, we were already Team Scorpius.

There are a lot of scenes that get a lot of talk, and they deserve it. But the second time I saw the show, for some reason I focused a lot on Anthony during the scene where Albus and Scorpius go to talk to Mr. Diggory. In many ways, it's Albus' scene. He's the one who is negotiating with Mr. Diggory to allow him to try and rescue Cedric. The second time I saw the scene, however, I could not take my eyes off of Scorpius. He was in such distress, watching Albus. He wrung his hands, and twitched his body and could not stay still. I described it like Scorpius was almost allergic to his body, like he was constantly in motion, unable to stand still and simply be. In that scene, he was in so much motion that he physically ended up turning himself around while hugging the wall, just watching Albus talk. It was amazing.

But the best scene of Anthony's? Was in Snape's classroom. That was masterful. Scorpius has a few lines in which he explains to himself, Snape, and the audience why the world is so messed up. Once Snape explains that Neville has been killed, Scorpius launches into a monologue working it all out. And when Anthony did it in London, it was incomprehensible. Scorpius' mind is just moving too fast, moving through the different factors that have plummeted the universe into darkness. He ends his incomprehensible mush of a monologue nearly screaming in relief at Snape "Can you see it!? Can you see it?!??" There is just no way to hear every word until the end, and it's perfect. It's perfect for a few reasons. One, it really displays how tightly wound Scorpius is in that moment. He has no idea why the world is so broken, and he's been denied access to the books that would give him that information and he's terribly, horribly lonely. He's probably at the very end of his rope, and all of a sudden he's been given some explanation, and finally the pieces are falling into place! No wonder he unravels so badly. Second, again, we trust Scorpius. We don't need to understand every word he's saying and that's ok. We know he's going to right place, Anthony has presented a character that we are okay trusting in that moment. Third, Snape is clearly WTF, which is excellent because it's amazing and horrible to watch Scorpius in that moment, and it does not incline Snape to trust him.

The fourth reason, in my personal opinion, is that whole line is a waste of dialogue and at least Anthony turned it into a good character moment. Hear me out. If you're a Harry Potter fan of any decent amount, you know what it means when you hear Neville died. The movies made Neville's moment BIG, and it is SO IMPORTANT in the books. When Snape says Neville was killed, the audience audibly gasps BEFORE Scorpius tells us why Neville was important. WE KNOW. And if you aren't a Harry Potter fan? Listen. If you aren't a fan you aren't going to follow the monologue anyway. it's too much information too quickly. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child's plot is very intimately tied up in close knowledge of the books. You don't need that knowledge to enjoy the play, because you can happily miss things and still enjoy the story of Harry and Albus and Scorpius (and a bit of Draco, Ginny, Ron and Hermione). Really, you can. But to get every detail without knowing the original story is just impossible without knowing the books, in my opinion. And this one line? Won't help you. Anthony took a line that (again, in my opinion) wastes the time of the play, and he sped it up, and he turned it into a great character moment.

Anthony was masterful in London.

And to be fair, it must have been exhausting for Anthony Boyle. Not only was he performing two different plays, keeping track of the lines and the staging and the magic, but he was playing a character who never stopped moving. It must have been like running a marathon daily.

Except Scorpius DID stop. There is a scene were Scorpius just on a staircase while Harry yells at Professor McGonagall to keep Scorpius and Albus separate. And if there was anything that could draw my attention away from Anthony Boyle on that stage, it was Jamie Parker, who embodied Harry Potter in breathtaking brilliance. And in this scene Harry is angry and Harry is yelling and yet you can't help look at Scorpius, huddled and silent in the background. Scorpius is still. And when compared to his ceaseless, restless, almost manic energy of the rest of the play, it's so noticeable. (ETA: Ok, Anthony did bite his nails in that scene sometimes when I saw him. But like, still. Very quiet.)

That is the Anthony's Boyle's Scorpius I remember. That's the one that I raved about for nearly a year, the one I tried to convince friends to literally fly out to London to see. And I stand by everything I said. Anthony Boyle deserved that Olivier, and I am fiercely glad he got it.

Now, I only saw Anthony four times in London, and I spoke to people about him as often as I could. I think there is wide consensus that Anthony had slumps during his time as Scorpius. Times he wasn't at full energy, times he was just going through the motions. And like, that's ok. It was his first major performance, he hadn't learned to pace himself. He flagged.

I'm saying this because I'm trying not to paint his first run completely in rose-colored glasses. I want to acknowledge it's possible that memory has perfected what reality did not. It's possible that a lot of what I'm saying was simply not true for his entire performance in London, and it's more true in my memory than in real life.

And to date I've only seen him twice in New York, and both times were at the very beginning of previews.

Have I qualified myself enough?

Because I don't like his New York performance.

I don't. I know he's been nominated for a ton of awards, and I know people are raving about how his performance is so much better and more ~deep~ in New York or whatever, but when I saw him all I could think was that he was...normal. Still a bit nerdy, sure, because his lines didn't change. (Well, mostly, one line was removed and I will probably never get over it.) But all that oddball weirdness that Anthony gave us? Gone.

This Scorpius has a lot of pauses. He's not as hyper, he voice doesn't bounce up and down the register, his line are slower and clearer. He doesn't have the same constant nervous habits. He comes off as more confident, actually, to me. Which might be because Anthony is more confident, which makes sense. But I miss my Scorpius so much it aches. Poor Sam Blenkin, in the second cast, who was excellent, had to battle the picture I had of Anthony in my head. And now, ANTHONY HIMSELF is falling short of my memory and it hurts.

To be clear, I think Anthony's performance is FINE. Perfectly acceptable, and apparently great if you've never seen him before. I've referred to him as Anthony 2.0, because I needed some way to distinguish in my head, to separate the performance I'm saw from him in the United States from what I saw in London.

When Jamie Parker played polyjuiced Scorpius, Jamie played London Scorpius and you could TELL. Jamie tucked his hair behind his ears and twitched and bounced across stage and it was heartbreaking because watching those differences hurt. Jamie will probably tone down his performance to match Anthony now and I want to shout at him not to do it, to let me keep some of London Anthony.

When I walked out of the theater after the first performance I saw in the United States, all I could think of was that Anne McCaffrey story. It's not a perfect analogy, but I felt like in London I saw something genuinely magical, something out-of-this world from Anthony. Something I can't translate to text, something that I don't even know if it would translate to screen. And Anthony Boyle's Scorpius has descended from stratospheric to, well, merely human. It's still good. Audience members still love him. I'll probably see him enough times in America (where the commute is far better than another country) to reconcile myself to his current performance. He's got skills, Anthony Boyle. I hope he goes far.

But I can't help mourn, you know? I can't help mourn the performance I did see in London. I'm crushed I'll likely never see it again.